Athanas Sylvain's page

The following written in a spidery, steady hand, in ink on rough parchment, upon a refurbished desk in a dim study, by the light of a fireplace and candles.

I am my father's son, but I am not my father. It is important to understand this. It is important I understand this.

My father was a butcher. He and my mother came to Isarn from Kyonin for... reasons they never shared with me. Perhaps It is not my place to speculate why they did what they did. It does not matter, now, if it ever did. My story has never been that of an Elvish elf, one who lived among that people. I have lived my whole life among humans, in a human city, in a human land. I have watched generations grow and wither and die. I have seen them taken by fear, and madness, the most pervasive and deadly of diseases.

My father was a butcher. I doubt if anyone remembers, now. He was respected in the community. He earned that respect, despite being a foreigner. Those were, as I recall, more pleasant times. Galt was a place of learning, a place of art and beauty, and those places tend to welcome rather than turn away. My mother was a midwife, and skilled in the arts of the common folk: herbs, poultices, medicine less costly than a priest's incantation, and better for healing the ills of the working man.

She was also well-respected, but she did not like it here. My father took to the city, mingled with its people and loved its streets. My mother was never home here. She left when I was a boy, perhaps twenty, thirty years old. It is hard to remember so long ago, when I was so young. I struggle to recall her face, her voice. I told a surgeon this once, and he looked at me with horror. But how could he understand? It has been two human lifetimes since I knew her. She is more a dream than a memory, now.

I did not blame her, nor did my father, that I can recall. I stayed with him, and he took good care of me. He taught me many things, about the world, about life, and about butchery, yes. From the time I was old enough to walk and carry something without dropping, I was an assistant in his shop, and once I could be trusted with a knife, I helped him in almost every regard. But it was more than cuts of beef and counting money that he taught me. From him I learned the importance of the community. Of finding and building your place in that community, and the power that comes from the respect of your fellow man. The importance of hard work and dedication, of setting your mind on a goal and following through, of fulfilling a promise. And, on the occasion a thief broke into our home, I learned the importance of having a sharp knife to hand.

My father was a good man, I truly believe this. Perfect, no, but there is no such thing. When the revolution came, the first one, my father was so proud. He was a true believer, thought he was witnessing the fruition of his hopes and dreams. His ideology of the power of people working together. The community. Liberté, égalité, fraternité. He cried the words as loudly as any.

But things soured. The people stopped working together, and began working against one another. The same cruel blades that heralded the end of the aristocracy became, almost inevitably, the fate of those who wielded them. And when he saw the tide turning, my father could not stand by and watch his dream turn to ash. He fled one night, leaving the store he had so proudly kept for over a century to the looters and thieves. He did not even leave me a note, or a hint of his destination, for fear he would be found out and hunted down. I do not blame him, though they never even questioned me.

My father was a butcher. He was a good man, and an idealist. But in the end, he was an old man and did not have the heart to live through a dream become nightmare. He did not have the stomach to fight and die for what he believed.

I am my father's son. But I am not my father.

- - - - -

I was nearly grown when the world came to an end. I exaggerate, but not so much as many might believe today. When Aroden died, it was... chaos. Countless humans suddenly cut off from their god, prayers falling on silent ears, holy men and women powerless in his absence. So many died. So many were frantic. I watched a priest collapse in the street, clawing at his ears and throat until he bled. I watched another leap from a high building in despair. What must it be like to hear the whispers of your god, to give your life in service to them, and have it all stricken away? I am grateful I cannot truly comprehend it.

And the storms. So few remember the storms now. Weeks of rain and wind and lightning. So many buildings were simply not built to withstand such an assault. Roofs collapsed, cellars flooded, shacks and stalls fell down or were simply blown to pieces. People were wounded, sick, and many clerics who would have cured them suddenly could not. Others were blamed or shunned.

It was in this chaos that I knew I wanted to become a doctor. In the absence of divine magic, mundane healing became even more prominent for a time. The first time I witnessed a surgeon stitching closed a wound from a shattered window, I found myself. I knew already the importance of the community, but now I knew what my place in that community would be. Curing the ills and weaknesses of the people, that we might all be stronger together.

I was fortunate. At that time there were still places of learning in Galt, in Isarn, and more than one hospital, more than a handful of trained physicians to outnumber the charlatans. And my father, reputable businessman that he was, secured me an apprenticeship at one of the hospitals, to learn their ways. He did not protest my absence from the store. I like to think he was proud of my choice.

I began as a surgeon's boy, carrying tools and mostly learning by paying attention as he did his work. The surgery was, and still is, in many ways, crude, but it is life-saving when performed by skilled hands. A spell can mend wounds in an instant, but only so often. A surgeon is limited only by his equipment, and so long as he keeps stocked, he may tend fully to as many patients as time allows.

When I finished my apprenticeship with the surgeons, I studied under the physicians; a higher class of healer, in many ways. The surgeon is the foot soldier to the physician's officer: a physician directs, advises, and treats the so-called finer points of medicine. I confess that I always preferred the surgeon's work to the lecturing and theory of the physician, but both are of great value. And ultimately, it was the path of the physician that I took,for it offered more respect, more ability to truly take a role of importance in the community.

It was also at the hospital that I learned of Pharasma, and became an adherent of her ways. She was respected, then, among more than a few of the healers. Many of her priests were also lost in the chaos after Aroden's death, either to madness or killed for her silence on Aroden's death, even as goddess of prophecy. But her roles in birth and death became still stronger as time wore on, and the midwives and morticians had always tended toward her worship. I was drawn to her not as the Lady of Mysteries, but the Mother of Souls: a goddess who watches over us from birth until death, and myself a servant who sought to make that life, and its transitions, as kind and painless as could be.

Of course, that very concern with souls meant that she was not long loved after the revolution began, and the Final Blades constructed. At that time, I was no fanatic, no devout disciple of the Gray Lady, but I knew in my heart that those blades were abominations. I was hoping to open my own clinic, and that move from the hospital and my lack of open and strong faith helped save me when they came for Pharasma's followers. Some of them had attempted to destroy the Final Blades. For that, they were put to those very Blades.

Now, I have my clinic, and I have my secrets. I pray to Pharasma in a hidden room in my cellar, every day that I can. I perform a ritual from her holy book, chanting from memory, for fear a text might be found. I bury the bones and exhume them each time from the dirt floor, and destroy the papers I use when I am finished. I do not own a symbol of hers, nor do I intend to do so. I have too many secrets to risk them over a show of faith.

I know that she understands. I do not hear her voice as a priest might, I do not feel her guidance when I pray. But I feel her hand around my own when I raise a knife. I feel her breath in the dying of every man I kill.

- - - - -

It was in the time of the Galtan Unity Council that I first killed a man. There are things I forget from long ago: my mother's face, childhood friends. But these decades of chaos, and hate, and fear, and misery... These I remember well. Fifty years of blood are etched into my mind more firmly than the hymns of Pharasma, more deeply than my father's lessons, more painfully than the Decrees of the Revolutionary Councils. Every waking moment, fifty years fill my thoughts, and when I sleep, I dream in history.

It The reason He was a young man. For a human, I guess he was the age I was when I took up my studies. He stopped me in an alleyway, on my way home from the clinic. It was the 24th of Sarenith, and even in the dusk the air was hot and heavy. He was sweating, it matted his wispy hair to his forehead. His eyes were hazel. They looked scared.

He flashed me his knife and demanded my money, my bag. I had my medicine and tools, said I could not part with it, told him my profession. By then the troubles had started for the doctors. Hospitals were closed, academies shuttered. Only the small clinics like mine survived, and in turn, helped the people survive. I remind myself of this when I remember. I could not afford to lose those tools. It would have crippled my work, my community. Parting with those tools would have been death.

My words did not reach him. He slashed out with his knife, a clumsy swing, a hack my father would have slapped my wrist for attempting. I stepped aside, but it cut the strap of my bag, and it sprawled to the ground. When he went for it, I grabbed at his wrist. My body has never been strong, but I am quick. Still, it was a struggle, and he stabbed me once, a shallow thrust along my side. I was fortunate that it was not deeper. Finally I took his knife in my hand, felt the weight.

I thought of what he had attempted, what would have happened if he had taken my tools, if he had killed me there in that alley. What would have become of my patients, my practice. All the people I might have treated in years to come, suddenly lost.

I sometimes wonder if Pharasma always intended that I take the path I have. It seems so full of twists and turns, and yet she is the purveyor of fate. The lessons teach us that every child born has its life revealed to her. How this is reconciled with the loss of prophecy, I do not claim to say. But I know I was uniquely trained to use a knife. My father's butchery, and my study of anatomy. They are not so dissimilar, in their way. You must know where to cut, and how to cut, and to have a steady hand.

I watched the life fade from his eyes. It felt important to do that, at least for the first man. Poetic, in its way. I had been by then a doctor for some forty years. Forty years in service to life, to preserving it and making it long and pleasant. In that moment, I also became a chaperone of death. The two sides of the coin, the Gray of the Lady. The Mother of Souls sees them both come and go. As that young man died in my arms, I knew I would do the same.

- - - - -

My clinic is in the Sud Rivière, not far from the Industrial District. It is good fortune that I landed here, across from Our Lady of Liberation. The Sisters do good work there, and I am grateful for their presence, but it is not for me. I keep my practice here, and I can help those unable to make the trek across the city. It is not large, not a hospital by any means, but I have my office, rooms for work, even employees who keep things running if I am not present. I have trained them as I can.

And I have done well. Not so well as to draw unwanted attention, thankfully. But I am respected. People know me, know of me, and there are businessmen who prefer a physician's care to the hospital in the Foreign District. When a merchant's wife falls ill, his friend might tell him, "Go to see Docteur Sylvain, he was a wonder for my Guillaume when he caught the fever, he saved the Lafaditte girl from infection and without even the loss of her hand." They know me as charming, kind, efficient. They know me an elf among humans who runs a neat shop and good practice, one I have kept for many years when there were few others left in this city.

I have taken great pains to ensure this, and to separate that image from my other work in the Sud. It is fortunate that there are so few skilled surgeons and physicians left, or they might know the bodies of thieves and murderers were not merely hacked and chopped. They might piece together that the killing blows were precise, aimed at arteries, ligaments, vital organs. If you know how, it is not difficult to hide such strokes from the untrained eye, to turn a deft slice of the trachea into a vicious mauling. Only one man I know has deduced that it is a surgeon's hand which guides the knives of Le Boucher, as they call me.

I do not pretend myself a good man. I know that what I do, even in service to a greater cause, is not justice. I am grateful for my friend's words of what is right, what is necessary, what we must sacrifice that others will prosper. But I know I have done wicked things. I am a doctor, and I am a murderer. No matter how vile the victim, what else would you call a man who kills in the night, slaying men who have not attacked him? Who have not even seen him in the shadows?

But what we do is necessary. I will not write details here. I am going to destroy this when I am done, as I have each time I write my tale. Even so, I have never put to paper what I have done these past few years. The risk is too high. But know that despite the danger, I will stay. I truly believe that what we do, if not the right thing morally, is the necessary thing to preserve the people. I will hide, but I will not run. I will fight, and if necessary, I will die for what I believe.

I am Athanas Sylvain. I am the chief doctor of a physician's clinic in the Sud Rivière. I am the man they call Le Boucher.

I am my father's son. But I am not my father.

- - - - -

The sound of pen across parchment comes to an end, and there is silence aside from the crackling of the fire. An elf, his hair gone mostly to silver, his body thin but not frail, leans back in his chair at the desk. While the ink dries, he watches the fire, sipping a glass of what wine he can purchase, in these days. When the glass is empty, he stands and takes the sheets of parchment, walks to the fireplace, and tosses them inside, watching them burn. When they have, he retrieves the ashes with a small, long-handled shovel, and places them on a tray. He uncorks a vial and pours its contents on the ashes, watching as they hiss and dissolve, the acid releasing an acrid smoke that stings his eyes. And when that is finished, he returns them to the fire, closes the grate, and leaves the room, locking it behind him.

Those who have lived to tell of the Butcher claim he is tall and lean. His namesake comes from both the grisly methods he employs, and the appearance he dons for his work. Most prominent is the heavy apron he wears, a crude thing fashioned from soft, beaten leather, which obscures his body and is covered in bloodstains, rough patches and stitching holding it together. His face is covered by an executioner's hood, rough and ragged and stitched together from various scraps of burlap and cloth, and showing the same telltale stains as the apron beneath. The slits for vision show little to the outside world, almost as if there is naught but darkness beneath that horrid cowl.

Worse still, though, is the wicked knife he wields, or so they say. The Butcher is skilled with many daggers, but his preferred weapon is a hefty carving knife, its blade long and heavy and curved for thrusting as well as cleaving. The hilt is that of a weapon of war, but the blade is made for chopping flesh. The serrated saw on the spine leaves horrible, ragged wounds in those it cuts, turning each slash or stab into a bloody mess.

This rough wounding is part of the Butcher's trademark: those he kills are almost always found with such terrible injuries. When bodies are found, it sometimes looks almost as if a wild beast has mauled them, or as if they were hacked apart with fury by a dull axe.

According to the stories, the Butcher's voice is unnaturally low and rough, and he frequently smells of dirt or decay, a musty scent that brings to mind underground places and death. These details, along with his continued operation and overall frightening demeanor, once led to the thought that he may be some creature of the crypt, but such stuff is mainly whispered by children and fools. Adults know better: the Butcher is almost certainly a man, although a terrible one whose path is best not crossed.

Le Meilleur Remède Bathhouse
Description