We Are The Weight Watchers. We Watch the Weight.

We are the Watchers of Weight. We watch. We wait. We watch the Weight, and we watch for the Weight. We have been waiting for you for some time now. I am–

I am no longer as I hoped I would be, for the day when you came.

Had you come but a few years ago, you would have seen our city at the height of its flower, would have seen spires and parapets and minarets, pinnacles and campaniles striving together toward the sun, would have seen the gleaming lights of the guard-towers flame into watchfulness at dusk, would have seen the poet-priestesses strolling in the Rune Gardens in the cool of the evening. You would have seen me as I was when God breathed through my sword and all men feared me, when I was taller than anyone for ten miles in every direction, when I could chase a deer for a week without stopping to eat or drink, then bring its dressed and flayed carcass home, fresh as the dawn. When I made a pledge by the altar, it was as if what I had promised already came to pass. I could have given you fields and strong and lovely maidens to plow them. I could have given you storehouses filled to bursting with ripe and fragrant grains. I could have given you menservants and beasts of burden laden with wines and figs and bags sagging with gold coin. I would have lain down my post, and I would have buried myself in the foundations of the city, and I would have given myself up over to rest and to sleep.

Had you but come a few years sooner.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

You are here now, and that is enough. We are the watchers of weight. We watch the Weight. You saw it, I trust, as you rode past the gates of our village?

It is a village, now. Call it a city no more. The learned women are gone. The governors are gone, the judges have fled to the forests and the high places. The Mothers of the Hearth have gone to rest under the grass, and they watch no more. The Weight has not stirred in these seventy-and-seven years, but still it sits, just beyond the gates, and one day it will wake again.

When last the Weight was on the move, I was young. Now I am what you see before me. Those were days of blood and fire. We halted the Weight before it entered the city, but we could not end it. We could not bury it nor pierce it nor break it. We had been told by some of the elders that it could be stopped by yogurts, by breathing deeply, by talking walks in between meals. We tried it all.

Now we watch the Weight. We watch, and we dwindle, and many of us go to sleep under the long grass without seeing the city restored to her former glory. Perhaps that glory will never come again.

We do not know if ours is the only Weight. We do not know if others will arrive, if others are already on their way. The crushing, unbearable Weight that brings with it darkness, that splits skulls and sits heavy on our hearts until they burst and pop and ooze into senselessnes.

Those of us who lived began the Watch. We have never wavered. We remember those early days–remember watching the Spire of the Moon crash and tumble into the Evening Pool and heard the empress’ strangled screams, screams that were followed by close and hateful silence.

It has been silent here ever since. I have lost many…I have lost many good friends to the Weight. It does not now move, but still to go near to it is death. Only last spring, one of the younger girls wandered too close as she gathered the poppies…

Let us not speak of such things now. You will do well. You are young, and you are strong, and you are ready to take up the Watching of the Weight. You must watch it always. Never let your eyes or your mind wander from it. See its bulge above the line of the city gates? The Weight is watching us, too. It sleeps, but it never rests. It ripples and rumbles and watches us in the dark. It gathers strength to itself with cunning and with malice.

Sometimes at night, I think I hear strange murmurs and whispers coming from the Weight. I think–I think–there have been times when I could swear I heard it speak my name, like it knew me. Like it longed for me.

Forgive me. I am grown old, and very foolish, and it has been long since I have spoken of such things to one as young as you. It does this fond old heart good to see you. To know that you will watch the Weight when I am gone and can watch no more.

Swear this oath with me. Swear this oath, then sit and talk a while–not long, certainly not long–then take up my post as I go to my rest.

Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no spouse, hold no lands, engender no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the shield that guards the realms of what was once the city. I pledge my life and honor to the Weight’s Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.