Mourners
The heavy, stooped people of the Lament, made of dark glass, with tears that glow on their cheeks and set into crystals. They mourn the world that broke into the shards they live among, and sing of it in the Sorrow Choir. They give their tears away as gifts and pay with them, because grief that is kept grows heavier and grief that is given away grows lighter. Strangers they call the dry-eyed, and are sorry for them.
«Oh... your eyes are dry. Completely dry? Then you came down the Throat, from above. I am …. Forgive the tears — they come by themselves, and they are not about you.»
The settlement and its dwellers
Crafts
Looks
Where they live
Mourners' Hollow. A hollow of the Mourners, cut level into the shards: halls of dark glass brick crowned with clusters of shards, Pele's tears glowing on their tips and blue lamps over doorways tall enough for a stooped giant. Every street carries a rivulet of tears to the cistern in the middle, and over the cistern the pale face of the Weeping One, she who weeps for all, looks down from her stela with tears on her cheeks.
Tasks
The Sisters' House· ElderGo down into the Tear Deeps, the first home of the Mourners, and come back up to the elder.
«Under the Shards lies our first home: halls cut in the dark glass for the vessels, cells for those who kept them, an archive where every tear was written down. The Sisters of the Vessels built it. We came up out of it and have not gone back: the Weight is heaviest there. You are dry-eyed, and the vessels do not pull at you. Go down for us. And when you come back, tell me whether the archive still remembers our names.»
Let Her Rest· ElderDefeat the Keeper of Tears by the last lake at the bottom of the Tear Deeps.
«You have stood in the archive; now you know who is at the bottom. She was the first of us to weep and the last to stop. She keeps every tear of every lake so that the rest of us do not have to, and the Weight is her sorrow. She is so tired, dry one. Give her back her tears on the altar by her empty plinth, and when she comes for them... let her rest.»
The Ring That Weeps· ElderWake the ring of frames by the lakes of the Lament: the gate between the worlds.
«Now the door by the lakes. It sleeps, and to wake it wants the Keeper's heart, the first tear, still falling; one who has stood under the Great Weeping to its end; dense iron and tear crystals for its frames; and deep embers for the road. Wake it, dry one. Then the dry-eyed can come and go without bells on chains, and nobody else will be left at the bottom of the Throat.»
Release the Glassed· Bell Ringer· repeatableDefeat two weeping sentinels, the glassed, so that the bell ringer can ring for them.
«The glassed were us once: they wept and never gave a tear away, and the weeping turned them to glass from the inside. They stand by the old places and cannot put down what they carry. We cannot release them; we are glass too, and they would only take us with them. You can, dry one. Release two. I will ring a stroke for each, and they will be gone, not lost.»
When the Bell Rings by Itself· Bell RingerLive through the Mourning Toll and bring the bell ringer two pieces of sorrow quartz from the fire-tears it raises.
«Sometimes the world itself mourns someone, and the bell rings without a ringer. With every stroke the glass cracks with light, and a breath later tears of fire spear up out of the cracks. I ring along with it: it is unkind to let a bell mourn alone. Stand through it with me, dry one. Watch your feet, not the bell. And bring me two tear crystals from the fire-tears, so I know whom it rang for.»
The First Nine· Choir SingerFind the Sorrow Choir and bring the choir singer an echo shard.
«The first nine singers sang so long that they turned to glass in the middle of a verse, and the song went on without them. One of them fell and hums lying down. Our choir has never sung there: we are afraid of singing it wrong. Go and stand by the bowl in the middle, dry one, and listen. And bring me a stone with a voice locked in it; your people find them in the deep dark. I want to keep one voice that is not ours.»
Weeping Upward· Choir SingerLive through the Upward Weeping and bring the choir singer three pieces of sorrow quartz caught in a jump.
«You have wept with the sky; now weep upward with us. Once in a long while the tears run backwards, up out of the lakes, and the Weight lets go by more than half. For a few breaths the world remembers it was whole, and we weep from joy: the only time we do. Crystals float up with the tears. Catch me three in a jump, dry one, before they rise too high. A verse needs something to hold.»
Stones That Hum· Choir Singer· repeatableBring the choir singer twelve amethyst shards: the choir tunes its voices by them.
«Your violet stones hum when they are struck, the way we do when we sing. The choir tunes its voices by them before every verse, and under the Weight they crack after a while. Bring me a dozen now and then, dry one. I pay with what the hollow has: berries, and green stones.»
Tears of the White Ghosts· Tear GathererBring the tear gatherer two ghast tears from the Upper Fire.
«The songs say the Throat goes up to a great burning sky where white ghosts weep. If they weep, their tears fall into the fire and are lost, and nobody keeps them. That is a terrible thing, dry one. Bring me two of their tears. We keep tears from everywhere, so that whoever shed them is a little lighter, wherever they are.»
Where the Falls Run Back· Tear GathererFind the Tear Falls and bring the tear gatherer eight Pele's tears from the crack above them.
«At the Falls the world weeps over a ledge, and if you watch long enough, the stream runs the other way, up into the crack where the fire-tears grow. Our children are told not to watch too long; our old ones sit there until the bell has rung a hundred times. I need fire-tears for the lanterns, dry one: eight of them, from the crack at the top. Do not watch too long. Or do, but come back.»
A Vessel for the Giants· Tear GathererCarry a lachrymatory of the hollow's tears from the tear gatherer to a soulfire keeper of the Giantkin, in the Ash.
«The bell-folk told of a world of ash and blue fire where the dead walk in caravans and nobody weeps. You have been there. Then nobody has ever wept for their dead... That is too heavy to leave as it is. Take them a lachrymatory, dry one, filled with the hollow's tears, and give it to whoever keeps their fire. Let one vessel of weeping stand by their dead. They need not weep themselves.»
A Face for the Crushed· Darkglass CarverFind the Glass Crypt and bring the darkglass carver a diamond for the finest cuts.
«In the Glass Crypt one of our dead lies crushed to shards: the Weight pressed the lid down until nothing of her face was left. I carve faces for those who have gone. But a face is the finest cut there is, and my iron chisels slip on it. Your people dig a stone harder than anything here. Bring me one, dry one. And go to the crypt first, and look at her niche, so you know whom you are bringing it for.»
A Name for the Strokes· Darkglass CarverCarry the finished face from the darkglass carver to the bell ringer, so that she is added to the strokes.
«Her face is done. Look: the brow, the tear paths, even the little chip on the cheek she had as a girl; the archive says so. Before it goes back to her niche, the bell ringer must see it: whoever is rung for must have a face, and whoever has a face must be rung for. Carry it to the ringer, dry one. Slowly.»
The One Still Inside· Cistern KeeperFind the Crushed Bell of the bell-folk and bring the cistern keeper two heat tiles for the pumps.
«I wear a helmet of the bell-folk and keep their pumps going: somebody has to remember how. One of their bells lies on its side out in the Shards. The crew built a windlass to lift it, and it never pulled. One of them is still inside; another stands by the hut, glass now. Go there, dry one. Bring me two of their fire plates for my pumps... and tell me the bell still lies quiet.»
Under the Great Weeping· Cistern KeeperLive through the Great Weeping of the Lament and show the cistern keeper a bucket of tears you filled yourself.
«When the sky weeps with us, great tears fall, tear crystals rain down, and everybody stops work and sings. The cistern fills to the rim, and I stand by it with my pails. Stand under the Great Weeping to its end once, dry one: the ring of frames by the lakes will know you after that. And fill a pail of tears from a lake with your own hands, and show it to me. You need not give it to me. I only want to see that you can carry it.»
Blue for the Cistern· Tear BearerBring the tear bearer six pieces of ringwoodite from the rocks of the Depths.
«You came. Few do. Under this floor is every tear we have carried here, and the cistern is cracking from grief. The blue stone of the deep holds water as we hold sorrow. Six pieces would mend it.»
The Ones Who Strike· Tear BearerFly to the Hanging Anvil, the station of the Gilded by the vent of the Forge, and come back.
«We hear blows from far off. Someone strikes and strikes, and never weeps. We would like to know what could be worth so much noise. Go to them. Listen. Come back and tell us whether they are happy.»
A Tear of Our Own· Tear BearerBring the tear bearer two pieces of sorrow quartz from the Lament for the Reliquary.
«Under the point of the Tear is the Reliquary. Two crystals of sorrow from home belong there, and I am too old to cross the vent. Bring them. Then climb, once, and take what was left for the one who would help.»
What to talk about
Tell me about this world.
You are standing on a broken thing, dry-eyed one. Once all of this was the Bowl: one glass, whole from rim to rim, and light stood in it like water. Then it broke. The shards stood up as mountains, the light ran out, and only what glows in tears is left. We call these lands the Shards; you call them the Lament. We are both right.
Under my world, at the very bottom of its stone, lies a dark land that is not its own. Its middle is hollow and cold.
...Slowly, dry-eyed. That is not a verse we have. We weep for what fell here and for what drifts — the shards have all of us. Nobody ever asked where the heavy part went. A broken thing has a top and a bottom: the top scatters, the bottom sinks, and sinking goes farther than falling. A dark land that will not mix with yours, hollow where a heart was... I will not say it is the Bowl's. None of us has stood there. But tonight one cup is poured onto the ground and not into the lake. If its roots are below, let them hear that someone knows. Be light.
Why weep for them, and not only for the Bowl?
Because nobody else does. The Bowl has all of us; they have only this verse. Whoever tries to hold something too big and fails carries two griefs: the thing, and the trying. We take the second from them, tear by tear. It is the kindest thing we know how to do for someone we never saw. ...Be light, dry-eyed. Said aloud, it is lighter.
Did all of the Bowl fall here?
The heavy verse says yes. There is a lighter verse we sing rarely, because it is almost too full of hope: that not all of the Bowl fell down. That some shards fell up — into the dark above the Throat — and float there still, with the light of the Bowl inside them. The bell-folk laughed at it. The bell-folk never wept, so of course they laughed.
The tablet of the Ark says life was carried out of a broken world.
...Carried out. Of a broken world. Say it once more, slowly, the way you would ring a bell. ...We do not know that it was the Bowl. We will never know. But if somewhere under ice a whale sings a song from before the Bowl broke, then the hands did not hold nothing. They held enough. I am weeping, dry-eyed, and it is a different weeping. It is light.
Why did it break?
The songs do not agree. One says the fire above grew too heavy. One says something fell down the Throat and struck it. The oldest says the Bowl was simply holding too much — too much light, too much stillness — and nothing whole can hold everything forever. That one we sing most often. It is the kindest.
What are the glowing lakes?
The tears of the world itself. The shards weep where they broke — down the veins in the glass, into the low places — and the lakes grow. Do not bathe in them: a lake does not drown the body, it drowns the heart. Whoever wades in grows slow and weak, as if everything they ever lost had come back to them at once.
Why is everything so heavy here?
Because grief is heavy, and this world holds a great deal of it. Every step here costs a little more than it should, and climbing costs most of all; that is why we cut our streets level and our halls straight into the glass. You will get used to it. Or you will learn to weep — that helps more.
Who else lives in the Shards?
Few, and each of them carries something. The tear drinkers carry comfort. The prowlers carry hunger. And the glassed carry what they never put down.
What are the little birds of glass?
Tear drinkers. They sip from the veins, and from us: one will land on your cheek and drink a tear before it sets. We let them. A tear that is drunk is not wasted — it lights the little throat, and the bird flies off shining. When the sky weeps, they come in clouds.
And the glass panthers?
Shard prowlers. They gnaw the tear crystals out of the veins — that is the light in their hides — and they hunt where it is darkest, without a sound. Leave one alone and it leaves you alone. Strike one, and it will not stop until one of you is in pieces. They den in the cracks between the ridges.
Who are the statues that move?
The glassed — weeping sentinels, you call them. Whoever weeps and never gives a tear away turns to glass from the inside, slowly, until only the weeping is left. They stand by the old places and do not move while you look at them; look away, and they are beside you. Do not hate them. They were us.
What is worth seeing here?
What the Shards have kept, and what we have built. Ask about one, and I will tell you what our songs remember.
Who is the kneeling statue by the pool?
The Weeping One — she who weeps for all. She weeps for those who cannot: for the dry-eyed, for the prowlers, for the glassed. Her pool never fills, because she does not keep her tears; she gives them to the ground. We light the lanterns by her pool when we pass. If you pass, light one too.
Names
Oloe · Ailu · Nimme · Velaine · Soreil · Ulame · Ilvo · Lirue · Eweth · Ollune · Hameil · Seluvi