ERLOS (Book One: Two Worlds)
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ERLOS
Book One: Two Worlds
Part One: Sorac of Aazyr
Chapter One
From the Diary of Hamish El Tyrone:
The labyrinth of days. How to fill the time? An old man spaces his actions carefully. The worst threat to an old man’s well being becomes his own mind. It can lead him into melancholy depression, painfully allayed to the guilt of knowing that he has little to complain about really. I have food. I have a home. I have my health. For all of which I’m truly grateful. I thank God every day. But still I feel abandoned, useless, like an old horse put out to grass. There’s no use trying to understand. I know nothing, just that an old man’s life is measured in fractions of the day. I don’t even try to understand anymore.
Young people try to understand. The old man knows that there can never be any real understanding of any truth that man can really ever know. Truth recedes, like the end of a rainbow. The truth will always reveal itself deeper and more complex, so what point searching?
I woke this morning with some thought I needed to write down. It was just one sentence. But it was too cold to get up and so I didn’t record it. Now it’s forgotten. I wake like a captive bird from freedom dreams of wings and sunshine, to the hopeless world of conscious thought. No shaft of sun, no ray of light, reaches the cage that shelters and protects me, while at the same time it denies me freedom and purpose of living. There is great sadness in my heart.
This depression is always with me, worst always in the morning. It’s my old companion. Another day stretches ahead. How to pass the long hours between now until nightfall, when I can sleep and dream again? So I fill pages with words. I don’t think about tomorrow. I don’t even think about the rest of today. The sky is cold.
I just have to get through the day that stretches ahead of me, the empty desert of hours. I only have to survive till nightfall. Night is my destination. The night is my friend. The night makes no demands. Nothing physical can satisfy me now: no food or drink, no woman’s kiss, no book or music. The cheeky, squawking gulls lift thin, hard wings into the wind: twisting, crying, fishing off the gale. Gulls, white as froth blown off the sea.
There is no sunlight through my window. Just grey. Everything seems pointless to me. There’s always a hollow darkness inside me now. I hear voices outside my window, the sounds of traffic starting on the road, the clank of chains, the clatter of wheels and axles, the clopping sound of the horses hooves, straining up the hill. Another day begins. My heart is breaking. It’s still early morning, I write these words, sitting here at the table that I made myself. This house has become for me a prison.
Sometimes, when it’s not raining, I take a backpack and walk up on the mountains. I spend whole days up there in summer beneath big leafy trees and beside small streams that tumble cold and clear and fast over ancient stones. I thank God always for my legs. Life is a fragile thing, is it not?
I owe so much to Clarissa. She is no longer in this world, but always close to me in spirit. She does not judge me. Without her I think I would just dig a hole for myself and die in it. But, as she used to say: we must always try to remind ourselves of where right prevails over wrong, to create the right intention and to see in entirety.
Wisdom is in the will to bestow.
There is no yesterday or tomorrow in this place, no morning and no afternoon. Expectation leads to certain disappointment. Expect nothing. That’s the first rule. I have only my words today.
Leave the why to greater ones. My mind swings like a pendulum. I deal with each day, hour by hour. Small things become important. I am careful always. The mornings are not good for me, in this grey, lonely place. I want nothing more of this world but that it should let me go. Oh, Holy Eloih, take away this grief. Put a stamp upon it. Mark it with a sign of death and pain, and scythe it away. I cannot do it alone. You are all powerful. But when you speak, yours is a small, still voice. You who created the world and all the universe. You care nothing for appearances. I know I have no human wisdom. I know I am alone.
The mountains surround me, here in the village where I live. Outside my window fallen leaves blow and scurry in eddies, scraping upon the black paved road, outside a yellow door. The leaves are gold and red and brown. They seem to glow from within with warmth of colour against the grey and black of approaching winter. Carriages rush past my window outside in the street. The leaves scrape and scurry. In here, it’s just me. Just me. The clock ticks.
I smoke my pipe outside on the paved courtyard where the trees have lost their leaves and then I bang the ashes out against the grey stone wall and return inside to sit down again in front of this mess of papers on my table. The words flow on, page after page, day after day. My main task now is to bring this work to conclusion.
Parts of it litter my table and topple from shelves, scrawled back-to-back and upside down in notebooks, on invoices -- between the entries in old diaries -- upon any paper available at the time. Bits of paper brittle and yellow with age lie in heaps and bundles and boxes all over the room. It’s a paper jungle. I’ve no idea how to order it all into some sort of a readable manuscript. Yet I’m determined to tell the story of Sorac of Aazyr. It is no task for weaklings.
The morning is nearly gone now. It’s nearly noon. The afternoon stretches ahead. When it gets dark I’ll warm the rest of the food I made yesterday, and eat it, and then go to bed, with a book, knowing that the day is over and that I own the equalizing night, as rightfully as any man; all men are equal in sleep.
I make a sandwich in my small kitchen and chew it carefully, with little enjoyment, concentrating. The hard crust can hurt the inside of my mouth. Half an hour has passed since I came in. I finish the sandwich and get up to rinse the plate, and then I come and sit back down again in front of this mess of papers on the table.
I have only these words to justify my life. The words flow on, page after page, day after day. Probably I won’t ever read them again, and nor will anyone else. It doesn’t matter. My heart aches for Clarissa. And for Aazyr. But what is home? I have no home in this world. The weak sun disappears again into the gray bleakness of sky, lost for the rest of the day.
Pass the daylight hours, that is all. That is my task, that is my journey. Silence fills the room. The clock ticks. I have to learn to be my own teacher. I will never know the future. I must not think about tomorrow.
It’s raining again.
***
Mykros of the Ukonaai was toasting victory upon the planet of Alutia, but sipping only now and again from his goblet. He was a dark, sparely built man. Mykros was a man of jewels and perfumes. He bathed and changed several times a day. Still, the smell of death seemed to stick to his skin and to his clothes, and to his neatly trimmed beard. The stink of rotten flesh went to bed with Mykros - the stench of corpses. No incense, no perfume, could overcome it.
At the other end of the table, Urn, his chief general, swilled beer in large draughts provided by two bare breasted women, one on each knee. Urn’s sword lay on the rough table around which wild haired warriors argued and sang and boasted in a roaring cacophony of noise, their shields and helmets hung upon the walls.
A serving maid stopped to fill Mykros’ goblet, but he covered it with his hand. The riotous banquet now in progress celebrated his final conquest of the north, making him now ruler undisputed of the Ukonaai people. But now Urn noticed his master’s mood and banged on the table for silence, shooing the girls.
“To Mykros!” he shouted, raising his tankard.
A roar arose from the assembled warriors. But Mykros was secretly annoyed with Urn, for he had not his captain’s drunken sense of celebration. Instead now that northern victory was complete, a new and terrible hunger gnawed at Mykros’s bones.
He rose.
“Aazyr is not yet ours,’ he said.
He sat down again.
The drunken warriors had expected a rousing speech. They sat stunned.
Mykros stood, sweeping back his cloak, and left.
Urn stood up, buckling on his sword, and followed Mykros out. He found him on a balcony overlooking the streets of the city. Mykros did not turn when he heard Urn coming up behind him. Urn now cold sober waited. A slow anger began seeping into his blood as Mykros’s words sank in, and he began to hate the man before him.
Mykros wheeled to face him.
“What did you expect?” he said.
“Not this,” Urn said.
“What's wrong with you, Urn?”
“Erlos will defend the Aazyr,” Urn replied.
“Are you a coward?”
Urn laid a hand on the hilt of his sword: “Dare not even you repeat those words!”
Mykros shook his head slowly: “Erlos will not defend Aazyr. Their own law forbids it.”
“What law?”
“Never you mind.”
“But… to spill the blood of Aazyr?”
“Go back inside and enjoy yourself Urn, before it’s your blood spilt.”
“I will not.”
“We’ll talk when you’re sober.” Mykros said. “Since when did you suddenly become so sanctimonious, anyway?”
“No!” Urn’s sword rang from its scabbard. ''I will not turn my hand against the Garden Kingdom.''
Mykros realized he had underestimated Urn’s mood: “Fool!”
He drew his own weapon. The blade glinted in the moonlight.
But Urn had already fallen upon his own sword.
“I will miss you, Urn,” said Mykros.
He took a step back, away from the quickly spreading puddle of blood.
*****
In the Garden Kingdom of Aazyr, the King Dumarion Ben was walking with his gardener in the gardens of the White Palace on a late summer afternoon. Although no longer young he was still an impressive figure, tall and fine-featured, and carried himself with upright assurance.
The gardener beside him was a stooped old fellow with a face as wrinkled as a walnut. The late sunlight glittered from the white stone walls and steps of the palace, set amongst orchards and gardens and tranquil waters.
Dumarion stooped to examine an unhealthy young orange tree.
“It’s dying downward from the top,” he said.
“But it's so young and weak that I’m afraid to prune it” the gardener said.
“If not done now, it will die anyway,'' said Dumarion
They talked for a while and then Dumarion Ben took his leave and walked back up through the orchards to the palace. Here at the heart of the Great Continent of Aazyr was the true seat of power upon the world of Alutia. He found that he had an unexpected visitor waiting for him.
“Well -- old Kierien,” said the king.
Kierien rose from the chair and shrugged off his hood, revealing deep purple eyes. Like most other Erlotians, he was only about five feet tall and hairless – diminutive beside the Alutian king -- and his bald head was topped with the distinctive Erlotian triple ridge – where Erlotian mental and psychic development had over the generations pushed out lumps in the skull to accommodate new cerebral matter.
“A monster is taking shape to the north,” he said.
Dumanion Ben sighed: “What will the Ukonaai hope to gain by cutting off the hand that feeds them?”
Of the five Alutian continents, the continent of Aazyr was the greatest and most prosperous. The northern lands were inhabited by the Ukonaai, wanderers and nomads loosely bound together by customs and beliefs into tribes and family groups,
“Aazyr must understand that although Erlos may warn and advise you, we are forbidden by our own law from any physical interference into the affairs of Alutia.”
“We know your law,” sighed the king.
“Do not underestimate the time,” said Kierien. “This thing has happened suddenly.”
“Have you come for Erlos then?”
“No. I’ve come for you.”
“To bring me common speculation?”
“My dear old friend,” said Kierien. “How can I make you understand that Mykros has united the Ukonaai?”
Although the scattered, argumentative Ukonaai did not observe the garden code of Aazyr and were constantly engaged in petty tribal warfare, they had never before thought to challenge the garden kingdom of Aazyr, which occupied the central part of the great continent to which it gave its name. Below the garden kingdom of Aazyr, stretched Llozd to the southern seas. The Llozdian people were tradesmen and merchants for the most part, of mixed blood.
The many small towns and villages of Llozd were loosely bonded together in some sort of order by various and constantly changing regional governments, whose main function was to distribute the food and other materials that flowed to Llozd in large abundance from Aazyr. Llozd’s own production came mostly from its mines.
So things had stood for as long as any Alutian could read or remember.
Dumarion Ben snorted with exasperation. He was about to say something but the intensity of other’s look warned him to silence.
“Aazyr has adhered to its own laws and the Great Spirit Eloih has extended his great hand of peace,” continued Kierien. “Although Erlos is at war with Bueloess, Aazyr has been protected from the suffering of that war. Until now. Aazyr must draw armies from Llozd. Aazyr must do it now. This is Erlos advice and counsel.”
“Arms have no place in the garden kingdom, Kierien. You know this,” said Dumarion.
The other lands of the planet Alutia were also largely dependent on the free caravans that arrived from the garden kingdoms, of which Aazyr was greatest, carrying grains and fruits and nuts and oils, and silks and perfumes, and pepper, cotton, wine and honey. From Llozd, Aazyr imported mostly metal artefacts and hril essence. The hril went to the Erlotians.
“No creature devours its own body,” Dumarion insisted.
“Madness knows neither reason nor restraint,” was Kierien’s dry response. “Aazyr can expect no help from Erlos.”
“You are weary, Kierien,” said the king. “Will you not bathe and refresh yourself then stay for dinner?”
“No. I must return."
(end of chapter one)
Book One: Two Worlds
Part One: Sorac of Aazyr
Chapter One
From the Diary of Hamish El Tyrone:
The labyrinth of days. How to fill the time? An old man spaces his actions carefully. The worst threat to an old man’s well being becomes his own mind. It can lead him into melancholy depression, painfully allayed to the guilt of knowing that he has little to complain about really. I have food. I have a home. I have my health. For all of which I’m truly grateful. I thank God every day. But still I feel abandoned, useless, like an old horse put out to grass. There’s no use trying to understand. I know nothing, just that an old man’s life is measured in fractions of the day. I don’t even try to understand anymore.
Young people try to understand. The old man knows that there can never be any real understanding of any truth that man can really ever know. Truth recedes, like the end of a rainbow. The truth will always reveal itself deeper and more complex, so what point searching?
I woke this morning with some thought I needed to write down. It was just one sentence. But it was too cold to get up and so I didn’t record it. Now it’s forgotten. I wake like a captive bird from freedom dreams of wings and sunshine, to the hopeless world of conscious thought. No shaft of sun, no ray of light, reaches the cage that shelters and protects me, while at the same time it denies me freedom and purpose of living. There is great sadness in my heart.
This depression is always with me, worst always in the morning. It’s my old companion. Another day stretches ahead. How to pass the long hours between now until nightfall, when I can sleep and dream again? So I fill pages with words. I don’t think about tomorrow. I don’t even think about the rest of today. The sky is cold.
I just have to get through the day that stretches ahead of me, the empty desert of hours. I only have to survive till nightfall. Night is my destination. The night is my friend. The night makes no demands. Nothing physical can satisfy me now: no food or drink, no woman’s kiss, no book or music. The cheeky, squawking gulls lift thin, hard wings into the wind: twisting, crying, fishing off the gale. Gulls, white as froth blown off the sea.
There is no sunlight through my window. Just grey. Everything seems pointless to me. There’s always a hollow darkness inside me now. I hear voices outside my window, the sounds of traffic starting on the road, the clank of chains, the clatter of wheels and axles, the clopping sound of the horses hooves, straining up the hill. Another day begins. My heart is breaking. It’s still early morning, I write these words, sitting here at the table that I made myself. This house has become for me a prison.
Sometimes, when it’s not raining, I take a backpack and walk up on the mountains. I spend whole days up there in summer beneath big leafy trees and beside small streams that tumble cold and clear and fast over ancient stones. I thank God always for my legs. Life is a fragile thing, is it not?
I owe so much to Clarissa. She is no longer in this world, but always close to me in spirit. She does not judge me. Without her I think I would just dig a hole for myself and die in it. But, as she used to say: we must always try to remind ourselves of where right prevails over wrong, to create the right intention and to see in entirety.
Wisdom is in the will to bestow.
There is no yesterday or tomorrow in this place, no morning and no afternoon. Expectation leads to certain disappointment. Expect nothing. That’s the first rule. I have only my words today.
Leave the why to greater ones. My mind swings like a pendulum. I deal with each day, hour by hour. Small things become important. I am careful always. The mornings are not good for me, in this grey, lonely place. I want nothing more of this world but that it should let me go. Oh, Holy Eloih, take away this grief. Put a stamp upon it. Mark it with a sign of death and pain, and scythe it away. I cannot do it alone. You are all powerful. But when you speak, yours is a small, still voice. You who created the world and all the universe. You care nothing for appearances. I know I have no human wisdom. I know I am alone.
The mountains surround me, here in the village where I live. Outside my window fallen leaves blow and scurry in eddies, scraping upon the black paved road, outside a yellow door. The leaves are gold and red and brown. They seem to glow from within with warmth of colour against the grey and black of approaching winter. Carriages rush past my window outside in the street. The leaves scrape and scurry. In here, it’s just me. Just me. The clock ticks.
I smoke my pipe outside on the paved courtyard where the trees have lost their leaves and then I bang the ashes out against the grey stone wall and return inside to sit down again in front of this mess of papers on my table. The words flow on, page after page, day after day. My main task now is to bring this work to conclusion.
Parts of it litter my table and topple from shelves, scrawled back-to-back and upside down in notebooks, on invoices -- between the entries in old diaries -- upon any paper available at the time. Bits of paper brittle and yellow with age lie in heaps and bundles and boxes all over the room. It’s a paper jungle. I’ve no idea how to order it all into some sort of a readable manuscript. Yet I’m determined to tell the story of Sorac of Aazyr. It is no task for weaklings.
The morning is nearly gone now. It’s nearly noon. The afternoon stretches ahead. When it gets dark I’ll warm the rest of the food I made yesterday, and eat it, and then go to bed, with a book, knowing that the day is over and that I own the equalizing night, as rightfully as any man; all men are equal in sleep.
I make a sandwich in my small kitchen and chew it carefully, with little enjoyment, concentrating. The hard crust can hurt the inside of my mouth. Half an hour has passed since I came in. I finish the sandwich and get up to rinse the plate, and then I come and sit back down again in front of this mess of papers on the table.
I have only these words to justify my life. The words flow on, page after page, day after day. Probably I won’t ever read them again, and nor will anyone else. It doesn’t matter. My heart aches for Clarissa. And for Aazyr. But what is home? I have no home in this world. The weak sun disappears again into the gray bleakness of sky, lost for the rest of the day.
Pass the daylight hours, that is all. That is my task, that is my journey. Silence fills the room. The clock ticks. I have to learn to be my own teacher. I will never know the future. I must not think about tomorrow.
It’s raining again.
***
Mykros of the Ukonaai was toasting victory upon the planet of Alutia, but sipping only now and again from his goblet. He was a dark, sparely built man. Mykros was a man of jewels and perfumes. He bathed and changed several times a day. Still, the smell of death seemed to stick to his skin and to his clothes, and to his neatly trimmed beard. The stink of rotten flesh went to bed with Mykros - the stench of corpses. No incense, no perfume, could overcome it.
At the other end of the table, Urn, his chief general, swilled beer in large draughts provided by two bare breasted women, one on each knee. Urn’s sword lay on the rough table around which wild haired warriors argued and sang and boasted in a roaring cacophony of noise, their shields and helmets hung upon the walls.
A serving maid stopped to fill Mykros’ goblet, but he covered it with his hand. The riotous banquet now in progress celebrated his final conquest of the north, making him now ruler undisputed of the Ukonaai people. But now Urn noticed his master’s mood and banged on the table for silence, shooing the girls.
“To Mykros!” he shouted, raising his tankard.
A roar arose from the assembled warriors. But Mykros was secretly annoyed with Urn, for he had not his captain’s drunken sense of celebration. Instead now that northern victory was complete, a new and terrible hunger gnawed at Mykros’s bones.
He rose.
“Aazyr is not yet ours,’ he said.
He sat down again.
The drunken warriors had expected a rousing speech. They sat stunned.
Mykros stood, sweeping back his cloak, and left.
Urn stood up, buckling on his sword, and followed Mykros out. He found him on a balcony overlooking the streets of the city. Mykros did not turn when he heard Urn coming up behind him. Urn now cold sober waited. A slow anger began seeping into his blood as Mykros’s words sank in, and he began to hate the man before him.
Mykros wheeled to face him.
“What did you expect?” he said.
“Not this,” Urn said.
“What's wrong with you, Urn?”
“Erlos will defend the Aazyr,” Urn replied.
“Are you a coward?”
Urn laid a hand on the hilt of his sword: “Dare not even you repeat those words!”
Mykros shook his head slowly: “Erlos will not defend Aazyr. Their own law forbids it.”
“What law?”
“Never you mind.”
“But… to spill the blood of Aazyr?”
“Go back inside and enjoy yourself Urn, before it’s your blood spilt.”
“I will not.”
“We’ll talk when you’re sober.” Mykros said. “Since when did you suddenly become so sanctimonious, anyway?”
“No!” Urn’s sword rang from its scabbard. ''I will not turn my hand against the Garden Kingdom.''
Mykros realized he had underestimated Urn’s mood: “Fool!”
He drew his own weapon. The blade glinted in the moonlight.
But Urn had already fallen upon his own sword.
“I will miss you, Urn,” said Mykros.
He took a step back, away from the quickly spreading puddle of blood.
*****
In the Garden Kingdom of Aazyr, the King Dumarion Ben was walking with his gardener in the gardens of the White Palace on a late summer afternoon. Although no longer young he was still an impressive figure, tall and fine-featured, and carried himself with upright assurance.
The gardener beside him was a stooped old fellow with a face as wrinkled as a walnut. The late sunlight glittered from the white stone walls and steps of the palace, set amongst orchards and gardens and tranquil waters.
Dumarion stooped to examine an unhealthy young orange tree.
“It’s dying downward from the top,” he said.
“But it's so young and weak that I’m afraid to prune it” the gardener said.
“If not done now, it will die anyway,'' said Dumarion
They talked for a while and then Dumarion Ben took his leave and walked back up through the orchards to the palace. Here at the heart of the Great Continent of Aazyr was the true seat of power upon the world of Alutia. He found that he had an unexpected visitor waiting for him.
“Well -- old Kierien,” said the king.
Kierien rose from the chair and shrugged off his hood, revealing deep purple eyes. Like most other Erlotians, he was only about five feet tall and hairless – diminutive beside the Alutian king -- and his bald head was topped with the distinctive Erlotian triple ridge – where Erlotian mental and psychic development had over the generations pushed out lumps in the skull to accommodate new cerebral matter.
“A monster is taking shape to the north,” he said.
Dumanion Ben sighed: “What will the Ukonaai hope to gain by cutting off the hand that feeds them?”
Of the five Alutian continents, the continent of Aazyr was the greatest and most prosperous. The northern lands were inhabited by the Ukonaai, wanderers and nomads loosely bound together by customs and beliefs into tribes and family groups,
“Aazyr must understand that although Erlos may warn and advise you, we are forbidden by our own law from any physical interference into the affairs of Alutia.”
“We know your law,” sighed the king.
“Do not underestimate the time,” said Kierien. “This thing has happened suddenly.”
“Have you come for Erlos then?”
“No. I’ve come for you.”
“To bring me common speculation?”
“My dear old friend,” said Kierien. “How can I make you understand that Mykros has united the Ukonaai?”
Although the scattered, argumentative Ukonaai did not observe the garden code of Aazyr and were constantly engaged in petty tribal warfare, they had never before thought to challenge the garden kingdom of Aazyr, which occupied the central part of the great continent to which it gave its name. Below the garden kingdom of Aazyr, stretched Llozd to the southern seas. The Llozdian people were tradesmen and merchants for the most part, of mixed blood.
The many small towns and villages of Llozd were loosely bonded together in some sort of order by various and constantly changing regional governments, whose main function was to distribute the food and other materials that flowed to Llozd in large abundance from Aazyr. Llozd’s own production came mostly from its mines.
So things had stood for as long as any Alutian could read or remember.
Dumarion Ben snorted with exasperation. He was about to say something but the intensity of other’s look warned him to silence.
“Aazyr has adhered to its own laws and the Great Spirit Eloih has extended his great hand of peace,” continued Kierien. “Although Erlos is at war with Bueloess, Aazyr has been protected from the suffering of that war. Until now. Aazyr must draw armies from Llozd. Aazyr must do it now. This is Erlos advice and counsel.”
“Arms have no place in the garden kingdom, Kierien. You know this,” said Dumarion.
The other lands of the planet Alutia were also largely dependent on the free caravans that arrived from the garden kingdoms, of which Aazyr was greatest, carrying grains and fruits and nuts and oils, and silks and perfumes, and pepper, cotton, wine and honey. From Llozd, Aazyr imported mostly metal artefacts and hril essence. The hril went to the Erlotians.
“No creature devours its own body,” Dumarion insisted.
“Madness knows neither reason nor restraint,” was Kierien’s dry response. “Aazyr can expect no help from Erlos.”
“You are weary, Kierien,” said the king. “Will you not bathe and refresh yourself then stay for dinner?”
“No. I must return."
(end of chapter one)
Last edited:
I look forward to the next chapter
Faithfulservant
Well-Known Member
After the first section with the old man.. I was not expecting the rest. Please be careful . Ppl steal works that aren't copyrighted!! I am also anticipating the next chapter 
ERLOS
Book One: Two Worlds
Part One: Sorac of Aazyr
Chapter Two
From the Diary of Hamish El Tyrone:
A good quill pen is well balanced in the hand. I have several pens but my favourite is an eagle feather, tipped with silver. The nib is smoothly made and the tawny eagle feather with its intricate pattern of stripes reminds me always of the camouflage of Aazyr’s endless grasslands.
As I was born unwillingly, bawling and kicking into this world, so now I endure it because I have no choice. Everything I do is still for her. Everything. If only she could see how the waves of clouds pile and break around the moon tonight. The sky is huge and holy, and beautiful. The energy of youth has left me. I’m weary. Perhaps I’m dying.
I sleep a lot these days. I tire easily and go to bed early. Often I wake at night to work upon these papers. I do not fear death. The Great Spirit Eloih who created me to write down this story, who has sustained my spirit through all my trials, I know will not let me die until the work is complete.
The people here are kind to me, upon this cold and rainy island that is now my home. I feel Clarissa always close to me in spirit. There’s nothing I want from the world, only to be with Clarissa again, in a better world than this one. She is the better part of me.
I long for Aazyr, as a sparrow for the sun.
The wind howls and leaps and assaults the senses. It booms and bangs and thumps for days and weeks and months on end. There’s no escaping it. The world exists in infinite dimensions. Let each man find his own world.
+++
Now upon the planet Alutia, in the garden kingdom of Aazyr, the Queen Dylia, gave birth to a son. When the news reached the people of the kingdom it marked the beginning of celebrations. People traveled to the Royal City by horse and on foot, bearing gifts for the new heir. Whether they brought precious gifts, or simple offerings of bread and fruit and flowers, the king and queen received the travellers into the White Palace where they feasted at long tables beneath ruby chandeliers in the great banqueting halls. For three months the festivities continued.
But Dumarion Ben was ill at ease. Mykros of the Ukonaai had invaded the Hril Islands and occupied them with his own forces, driving off Aazyr’s Llozdian custodians and cutting off the supply of hril to Erlos. The mind expanding hril essence was highly prized upon certain of the Seven Cities of Erlos.
By invading the hril islands Mykros was testing Erlos, who could have crushed him easily but for their own high law which forbade them any physical interference upon the surface of the planet Alutia.
++++++++++++
From the Diary of Hamish El Tyrone:
I have two lives. In the world of men I am despairing, but here inside myself I find my hope, alone and silent in the night, working through the hoops towards the light, behind the painted eggshell of the sky. The writer asks for no more than a pen and a candle in a bottle and the silence of the night to fill his chest of words, where treasures and cheap trinkets mix, searching, writing words that no-one will ever read, trying to cage the bird of thought before it’s gone, flown out the window.
But nothing is ever lost really. It just feels like that sometimes. It’s 4 am, the wolf hour. My brain boils and I cannot sleep. My thoughts keep shifting, changing form as swiftly as the flicker of light on water.
There are infinite dimensions. There is a darkness of heart that is a sin against the sweet bird of hope that is reborn eternally from ashes and rises shining, soaring, small and beautiful, above the smoke and blood of war.
Outside in darkness, the rain falls like a blanket. It swashes down in sheets and curtains. Outside there is nothing dry: no single leaf, no inch of earth, no patch of skin or fur. The autumn trees have lost their leaves. Each day is now shorter, colder than the last as winter approaches here in the north, where velvet darkness is my brother and my friend.
My only work now is to finish this book. Beyond the protective walls of time the Great Spirit Eloih sees what men cannot. Time blocks man's vision of what lies ahead so I continue to fill the empty pages of yesterday with new words, as I have always done, for without a sense of purpose, man’s life spirals fast away.
Something drives the work forward.
Oh, it will be written with a stick in the dirt by the side of the road, if there’s no pen.
+++++++++++
With great speed now, Mykros marshalled his Ukonaai forces. The fall of the hril Islands had given him confidence that Erlos would indeed not intervene. Only a few months had passed since the birth of Dumarion Ben’s son when the Ukonaai armies swept into Aazyr. The Aazyrians’ unskilled resistance was easily swept away by the Ukonaai warlord with his terrible weapon, until at last Mykros reached the Royal City itself.
During that terrible night, while Dumarion Ben struggled uselessly to defend the wall that had hastily been thrown up around the city, he received a summons. Leaving the wall he made his way to his chambers where he found his wife Dylia in conversation with Kierien.
“At last you have come,” Dumarion said. “Just a year since we met and all you said has come to pass. Do you bring hope?”
“For Aazyr – none. For you and your family -- rescue,” replied Kierien.
“I cannot leave the city now,” Dumarion whispered.
“And I cannot leave my husband or my people,” said the queen.
“Then take this.” Kierien pressed a glass phial into her small hand: “'Tis painless, even sweet.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Dumarion Ben held his wife against his chest: “My love -- go with him.”
“I will not leave our people now,” she repeated.
She passed her baby son into Kierien’s arms.
“Take good care of him.”
“You need have no fear of that.”
+++++++++++
From the Diary of Hamish El Tyrone:
The hem of the robe.
All my active years I have been a governor upon the great continent of Aazyr: both under Mykros of the Ukonaai and before him, freely elected by my own people of Llozd, when Dumarion Ben ruled the garden kingdom.
In those years I was quite a wealthy man, living with my dear wife in a large home where purple bougainvillea vines rustled in the hot wind outside the open window of my study and where jasmine flowers scented the warm indigo night with their lovely perfume. In those days I commanded men; they did my bidding without question and my signature carried power of life and death.
Not a night goes by that I do not dream of Aazyr, of the clean white sun and hot blue open sky, and of the spices, stacked in colourful mounds on the open tables that filled the air with their fragrance in the noisy, bustling markets of Quod, the semi-desert town that was my home.
But now, here upon this island of Marana, that since Clarissa’s death has now become my home, the windows of my little house are mostly closed all day and night against the chill and I am nobody to anyone here in the small town where I am living out my days between a wild and windy moor and cold and windy sea.
But my dreams are not only of Aazyr. I dream of many things. I believe that my dream life is a special gift that is becoming for me a purification through which I am able to throw off some of the burden of the accumulated weight of the selfishness of my younger years.
Last night I dreamed of a malicious angel, destroying lives with just one touch – in just one instant, and then flying away, like a dragon, rising on huge wings into a darkened sky.
She first appears a thing of light and beauty. She swiftly enters through the slightest gap or chink -- as light – then in one instant she destroys a whole life’s work. She is beautiful on the outside, but inside is only corruption: like a beautiful woman who, beneath her lovely skin, is crawling with maggots from the grave.
A man sees her and is captivated by her outer beauty to compromise the loyal love that sustains him. He destroys not only himself, but also the innocent who truly loves him. He destroys her heart and faith, and loses her, and so loses himself, and finds himself alone, surrounded by terrors and demons – like the fool who opened Pandora’s beautiful box, and set pain free.
++++
So it was that a boy grew up in an Aazyrian village.
His name was Sorac, which meant 'the shepherd'. His life had never been an easy one, but the shepherd boy knew no other. His home had none of the beauty of the old traditional settlements that had once been man’s habitat upon the great Aazyrian plains, whose low, thatched, stone-built dwellings once had sheltered quietly under trees, as much a part of nature as the rivers and the mountains that surrounded them.
Now the villages looked parched and ugly, all but bereft of shade and water, surrounded not by green and growing fields but by cracked and dusty earth. The peasants had abandoned the ways of the garden kingdoms and now paid food taxes to the Mykros.
Though the fence enclosing Sorac’s village had long since fallen into disrepair, those who lived there were still under curfew from dusk till dawn, on pain of death. The villagers had to cut trees for firewood so, every year, the crops and pasture grew further from their homes.
When the Emperor needed more soldiers he took them from the villages and towns of Aazyr; sometimes his soldiers ventured south into Llozd. Food was always scarce now in the village, while the Emperor demanded ever more grain to feed his regiments.
The Ukonaai invasion of Aazyr had brought with it a torrent of fear that spread in widening circles from the Emperor Mykros of the Ukonaai and from the terrible weapon that gave him power. Now, with the sacking of the garden kingdom of Aazyr, dear to all Alutia, greedy, imprisoned spirits took vengeance upon all nature, and the garden kingdom had become a barren land, as if the earth itself withheld its fruits from greedy men.
The Royal City of Aazyr, once so splendid, had lapsed now into ugliness and decay. The Ukonaai had none of the sense of beauty of the Aazyrians. Mykros wasted little effort upon the gardens of the White Palace, though the interior was rich and lavish. For Aazyrians, the Royal City had become a dark and frightening place that meant imprisonment and death. They had come to fear the White Palace, and to curse it.
A fresh, cool breeze was blowing from the mountains as today Sorac rose and washed, and gathered his sheep from the pen while the sky was still dark.
Dawn’s first grey fingers probed the night.
The sheep strung out ahead of him along the pale winding road in the uncertain light as he walked behind, driving them to pasture in the mountains. The youthful shepherd was thinking about his mother. She had hurt her knee in a fall and it had never healed properly. She was not an old woman, but frail. She walked with a stick. She had raised Sorac alone. He had never known a father.
He drove his sheep up the narrow mountain path as the sun climbed into a hot blue sky. Soon his shirt was sticking to his back. Sorac’s normal disposition was passive. Most of the younger villagers took turns as herdsmen but he by choice preferred the solitary life of a shepherd. The expression in his eyes always suggested that he was looking at some far-away horizon, perhaps beyond the view of other men, though he exuded no attitude of superiority.
He had grown as a normal boy, suffering the grazed limbs and bruises incurred in the antics and scuffles that were a part of the life of any village boy. Sorac had no real enemies. He also had no real friends. He genuinely seemed to prefer his own company. He was a solitary soul. He spoke quietly and seldom said anything twice.
At mid-morning he sat with his back against a rock and played his reed flute while the sheep grazed peacefully. His brown eyes were open-set in a pleasant face. Dark hair curled down onto lean, sunburned shoulders. The woodwind notes hung and drifted on the stillness of the mountains as morning turned to noon.
He ate his flat corn cakes and drank clear water from a stream and smoked his pipe, and then he sat with his legs crossed and watched the thoughts passing through his mind as if they belonged to someone else. After a while he was not thinking at all; he just existed, like the bracken and the wind.
The day passed.
As the sun sank towards the horizon, the air began to cool so he put on his cloak and calling his sheep he began gathering them for their return to the village before curfew, only to learn that a lamb was missing. He went in search of the missing lamb and found it trapped in a small ravine, bleating pitifully for its mother. Time was against the shepherd when at last he had hoisted the struggling lamb from the narrow crevice into which it had fallen and carried it on his shoulders back to the flock, where it gambolled around its mother with huge glee.
Afternoon shadows lengthened and dusk came quickly.
It was getting late as he hurried the flock down the stony path, eventually topping a last ridge and seeing the thatched roofs of the village below him. The sun was slipping behind the mountains and the western horizon was aflame in red and purple, turning the clouds into islands in the sky.
He was just beginning to herd his sheep down the slope when, from his high vantage point, he spied a band of mounted Ukonaai soldiers fast approaching the village in a cloud of dust on the road.
Sorac began whistling and waving and shouting to raise the alarm but he was lost in shadows and too far from the village – but fortunately also from the soldiers -- for anyone to see or hear him.
The Ukonaai raiders swept into the darkening village. They smashed into the huts, looting whatever they could find. When a door would not open, they set fire to the hut. The old headman tried to protest, but they beat him to the ground and spat and urinated on him.
When a youth, one of Sorac’s friends, attacked them with a sickle, the soldiers knocked him senseless and then bound his wrists. An older man, the youth’s father, tried to intervene with an axe-handle, but was also beaten and tied. After rounding up all the males of military age, the Ukonaai turned their boots upon the old headman where he lay in the dust, curled up in a ball, sticky with his own blood. Helpless, his cries grew faint and finally died away. Still not satisfied, the soldiers to looking for stragglers before riding away, dragging off their captives.
Only when he was sure that they were gone did Sorac finally lead his sheep down the slope into the village, where the headman lay dead. He found his mother and they rushed into one another's arms.
"I am a coward," he said quietly.
"What could you have done?" she asked him.
"I should have come down," he said.
"Then what?” she asked. “You could not have done anything against them. And what would they want with me, a lame old woman like myself? You trusted your instinct. You have always trusted your instinct. It is only when you fail to trust it that it will ever betray you, Sorac. Oh no, my son, you are not a coward.”
He did not reply. He knelt to light the fire. He blew gently on a glowing coal and built it up with twigs.
"Trust it," she repeated.
After the remaining villagers had prepared their poor headman for burial, they shared their food and sorrows. Sorac ate the little in his bowl, then sat alone by the fire outside his hut, a blanket around his shoulders against the chill night wind and smoked his pipe, all the while berating himself as a miserable coward. A cricket shrilled in darkness. The sound drilled into his brain. The air grew colder. He pulled the blanket closer around his chest.
The shepherd sat there for a long time, until a shadow detached itself from the darkness. It came forward into the circle of firelight and Sorac saw the upright hooded figure of an old man. He wore sandals and a plain brown robe, belted at the waist, and he carried a long wooden staff. Dark amethyst eyes burned beneath the hood.
Sorac bowed his head in greeting, waiting, as was the custom, for the elder to speak first.
“Do you know me?” Kierien asked him.
“Father, I do not,” replied the shepherd.
“But I know you, Sorac.”
“You risk the curfew, father. Are you hungry?”
“No,” Kierien said, “I am not here for food.”
A chill wind gusted from the mountains and ruffled the old man's cloak around his shoulders.
''Do you want to hear a story?'' he asked the shepherd.
Sorac was always ready to hear a story. Listening to travellers' tales was his only excursion into the unknown greater world beyond his village.
Kierien took his place beside the fire. Shadows flickered on the ancient parchment of his face as he told the shepherd of how the queen Dylia of Aazyr had given birth to a baby son shortly before she and her husband, the king Dumarion Ben, had died on the night that the Royal City had fallen to Mykros.
The shepherd listened quietly and respectfully. He did not wish to appear rude by telling the stranger that all this was nothing new to him. Only 20 years had passed since Mykros invasion of Aazyr and so the fall of the Royal City was still fresh in the minds of most Aazyrians.
But now Kierien, speaking in a quiet voice, explained how he had carried the infant away from the Royal City and given him into the care of a devout woman -- a follower of the code of the old garden kingdoms -- whose husband had died that night, alongside the king on the walls of the city. Shortly before the invasion, the woman’s own baby had been still-born.
Sorac was starting to enjoy the story He stared into the yellow flames, thinking that the rising brightness of the fire must draw from the heavy, patient wood for its own power to reach upward.
''That baby was you,'' Kierien said.
The statement took a few moments to register, and then Sorac rose indignantly to his feet. “Our headman died today,” he said quietly. “All my friends are taken by the Ukonaai. Yet you have come all this way to taunt me, father? There was no need: I already know I am a coward. Goodnight, father. I must rise early.”
“Come back. Sit down.”
He paused with his back to the old man, his fingers already on the handle of the hut’s door.
“Do not snub me, Sorac.”
Sorac returned to the fire and sat down. He looked at the old man sullenly for a few seconds. Their shadows flickered and jumped in the firelight making eerie patterns against the walls of the hut. He slowly shredded tobacco into his pipe, his mind trying to negotiate the enormity of what he had just been told. Suddenly, in one awful instant of awareness, he knew it was true.
''Yes Sorac. Your real mother was Queen Dylia and your father the king Dumarion Ben of Aazyr,''
Sorac’s heart was pounding. He needed to know more. He wanted to stay calm. He knew there was more to come. He added wood to the fire. He watched the wood bubble and hiss and flare.
When Kierien broke the silence, there was compassion in his voice.
“What do you know about the weapon of Aba Mainyus?”
“It is an ancient myth, father -- a fairy tale.” Sorac explained.
“And I want to hear it.” Kierien said.
“It is a legendary weapon forged in the distant past by Aba Mainyus, the Great Adversary, able to capture and hold forever the souls of those slain by it,” he said: “The souls become part of an army of wraiths, bound in service. The man who wields the sword would have terrible power. But he would be driven mad too.”
''Go on,'' Kierien prompted. ''Tell me the rest.”
Sorac had just been through one of the most traumatizing days in his young life. Who was this man? What did he want? What did it really matter to Sorac who his real mother and father had been? It didn’t change anything. He was a shepherd. The only mother he had ever known was sleeping inside the hut.
He just wanted to forget the conversation and go to bed. Why should this strange old traveller now insist on hearing from him a common fairy tale, known to every child in Aazyr?
“It's said the Angel Chieftain Mycyl created a sword of light and used it to cut away the foundations of the dark continent of Aba Mainyus, which sank into the sea forever,'' Sorac said. He was tired and exasperated: "It was just a myth, a legend."
The old man nodded thoughtfully. “However, like the hard shell of a nut, a legend may protect some truth within, and the weapon of Aba Mainyus does indeed exist," he said. "Moreover, it has come into the possession of Mykros, the Emperor of the Ukonaai. Although the weapon is really an evil force, Mykros perceives it merely as a sword. And it is the source of all his power.”
Sorac wasn’t convinced. And why should it concern him anyway? What good to him was it to know all this? Thoughts and emotions boiled inside him.
“Go on,'' said Kierien.
Sorac shrugged. He’d had enough. “That’s all I know.”
Kierien lips tightened briefly into a quick, rare smile.
“Then I will finish it for you,” he said. “The legend goes on to say that Mycyl placed the sword of light in a cavern of ice and set over it a fierce guardian -- Cebus -- knowing one day the weapon of Aba Mainyus would return to the world of men, and in that day a man would be born to wield the weapon of Mycyl against it.”
The chill night wind plucked at their garments. Thin grey clouds wisped like smoke against the bright stars, pinpricks in the light-bound blackness of the sky.
“Perhaps you are that man, Sorac?”
Sorac moved to get up again but the dark eyes flashed dangerously. The shepherd thumbed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. He held a twig into the fire. He waited for it to flare then lit his pipe and puffed up a cloud of smoke.
“I’m just a shepherd,” he said, at last.
"And the son of a king, too. "
“I’ve never even held a sword.”
“One can learn such things.”
“Father, I cannot do it.”
“Then what will you do?” Kierien said. “You can’t stay here. Unless you wish to join the armies of the Ukonaai?”
Their shadows danced in the firelight. Sorac knocked the ashes out of his pipe against a stone.
"One man alone cannot defeat those armies, father?"
"It must start with one man, Sorac.”
Sorac stared into the fire as if he would find an answer there. It was madness. Finally he lifted his head: "How?"
Kierien nodded: “You must go to the mountain Coreyan, beyond the desert of the Naar, within the Sacred Kingdom of H’zaar Trith, of which it is written that ‘only the pure of heart may enter there, and none that enter ever leave, except the one that wins the sword of Mycyl.’ There you will find the sword.”
“How will I find it?”
Kierien spoke for a long time, speaking in a quiet voice, pausing sometimes to gather his thoughts in order to avoid digressions, and when he was finished silence came between them. A log popped in the flames.
“Then I will try.”
“I know you will,” Kierien said. There was deep sadness in his eyes. “Trust Eloih for all you need. Take nothing with you. Ask nothing of any man. Everything will be provided.”
"When should I leave?"
“Go now, before the sun," Kierien said, rising. "Follow the great south road.”
He slipped back into the shadows.
Already the stars were beginning to fade.
Sorac turned to find his mother standing behind him. She smiled sadly.
“I always knew,” she said.
(end of Chapter Two, Part One)
Book One: Two Worlds
Part One: Sorac of Aazyr
Chapter Two
From the Diary of Hamish El Tyrone:
A good quill pen is well balanced in the hand. I have several pens but my favourite is an eagle feather, tipped with silver. The nib is smoothly made and the tawny eagle feather with its intricate pattern of stripes reminds me always of the camouflage of Aazyr’s endless grasslands.
As I was born unwillingly, bawling and kicking into this world, so now I endure it because I have no choice. Everything I do is still for her. Everything. If only she could see how the waves of clouds pile and break around the moon tonight. The sky is huge and holy, and beautiful. The energy of youth has left me. I’m weary. Perhaps I’m dying.
I sleep a lot these days. I tire easily and go to bed early. Often I wake at night to work upon these papers. I do not fear death. The Great Spirit Eloih who created me to write down this story, who has sustained my spirit through all my trials, I know will not let me die until the work is complete.
The people here are kind to me, upon this cold and rainy island that is now my home. I feel Clarissa always close to me in spirit. There’s nothing I want from the world, only to be with Clarissa again, in a better world than this one. She is the better part of me.
I long for Aazyr, as a sparrow for the sun.
The wind howls and leaps and assaults the senses. It booms and bangs and thumps for days and weeks and months on end. There’s no escaping it. The world exists in infinite dimensions. Let each man find his own world.
+++
Now upon the planet Alutia, in the garden kingdom of Aazyr, the Queen Dylia, gave birth to a son. When the news reached the people of the kingdom it marked the beginning of celebrations. People traveled to the Royal City by horse and on foot, bearing gifts for the new heir. Whether they brought precious gifts, or simple offerings of bread and fruit and flowers, the king and queen received the travellers into the White Palace where they feasted at long tables beneath ruby chandeliers in the great banqueting halls. For three months the festivities continued.
But Dumarion Ben was ill at ease. Mykros of the Ukonaai had invaded the Hril Islands and occupied them with his own forces, driving off Aazyr’s Llozdian custodians and cutting off the supply of hril to Erlos. The mind expanding hril essence was highly prized upon certain of the Seven Cities of Erlos.
By invading the hril islands Mykros was testing Erlos, who could have crushed him easily but for their own high law which forbade them any physical interference upon the surface of the planet Alutia.
++++++++++++
From the Diary of Hamish El Tyrone:
I have two lives. In the world of men I am despairing, but here inside myself I find my hope, alone and silent in the night, working through the hoops towards the light, behind the painted eggshell of the sky. The writer asks for no more than a pen and a candle in a bottle and the silence of the night to fill his chest of words, where treasures and cheap trinkets mix, searching, writing words that no-one will ever read, trying to cage the bird of thought before it’s gone, flown out the window.
But nothing is ever lost really. It just feels like that sometimes. It’s 4 am, the wolf hour. My brain boils and I cannot sleep. My thoughts keep shifting, changing form as swiftly as the flicker of light on water.
There are infinite dimensions. There is a darkness of heart that is a sin against the sweet bird of hope that is reborn eternally from ashes and rises shining, soaring, small and beautiful, above the smoke and blood of war.
Outside in darkness, the rain falls like a blanket. It swashes down in sheets and curtains. Outside there is nothing dry: no single leaf, no inch of earth, no patch of skin or fur. The autumn trees have lost their leaves. Each day is now shorter, colder than the last as winter approaches here in the north, where velvet darkness is my brother and my friend.
My only work now is to finish this book. Beyond the protective walls of time the Great Spirit Eloih sees what men cannot. Time blocks man's vision of what lies ahead so I continue to fill the empty pages of yesterday with new words, as I have always done, for without a sense of purpose, man’s life spirals fast away.
Something drives the work forward.
Oh, it will be written with a stick in the dirt by the side of the road, if there’s no pen.
+++++++++++
With great speed now, Mykros marshalled his Ukonaai forces. The fall of the hril Islands had given him confidence that Erlos would indeed not intervene. Only a few months had passed since the birth of Dumarion Ben’s son when the Ukonaai armies swept into Aazyr. The Aazyrians’ unskilled resistance was easily swept away by the Ukonaai warlord with his terrible weapon, until at last Mykros reached the Royal City itself.
During that terrible night, while Dumarion Ben struggled uselessly to defend the wall that had hastily been thrown up around the city, he received a summons. Leaving the wall he made his way to his chambers where he found his wife Dylia in conversation with Kierien.
“At last you have come,” Dumarion said. “Just a year since we met and all you said has come to pass. Do you bring hope?”
“For Aazyr – none. For you and your family -- rescue,” replied Kierien.
“I cannot leave the city now,” Dumarion whispered.
“And I cannot leave my husband or my people,” said the queen.
“Then take this.” Kierien pressed a glass phial into her small hand: “'Tis painless, even sweet.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Dumarion Ben held his wife against his chest: “My love -- go with him.”
“I will not leave our people now,” she repeated.
She passed her baby son into Kierien’s arms.
“Take good care of him.”
“You need have no fear of that.”
+++++++++++
From the Diary of Hamish El Tyrone:
The hem of the robe.
All my active years I have been a governor upon the great continent of Aazyr: both under Mykros of the Ukonaai and before him, freely elected by my own people of Llozd, when Dumarion Ben ruled the garden kingdom.
In those years I was quite a wealthy man, living with my dear wife in a large home where purple bougainvillea vines rustled in the hot wind outside the open window of my study and where jasmine flowers scented the warm indigo night with their lovely perfume. In those days I commanded men; they did my bidding without question and my signature carried power of life and death.
Not a night goes by that I do not dream of Aazyr, of the clean white sun and hot blue open sky, and of the spices, stacked in colourful mounds on the open tables that filled the air with their fragrance in the noisy, bustling markets of Quod, the semi-desert town that was my home.
But now, here upon this island of Marana, that since Clarissa’s death has now become my home, the windows of my little house are mostly closed all day and night against the chill and I am nobody to anyone here in the small town where I am living out my days between a wild and windy moor and cold and windy sea.
But my dreams are not only of Aazyr. I dream of many things. I believe that my dream life is a special gift that is becoming for me a purification through which I am able to throw off some of the burden of the accumulated weight of the selfishness of my younger years.
Last night I dreamed of a malicious angel, destroying lives with just one touch – in just one instant, and then flying away, like a dragon, rising on huge wings into a darkened sky.
She first appears a thing of light and beauty. She swiftly enters through the slightest gap or chink -- as light – then in one instant she destroys a whole life’s work. She is beautiful on the outside, but inside is only corruption: like a beautiful woman who, beneath her lovely skin, is crawling with maggots from the grave.
A man sees her and is captivated by her outer beauty to compromise the loyal love that sustains him. He destroys not only himself, but also the innocent who truly loves him. He destroys her heart and faith, and loses her, and so loses himself, and finds himself alone, surrounded by terrors and demons – like the fool who opened Pandora’s beautiful box, and set pain free.
++++
So it was that a boy grew up in an Aazyrian village.
His name was Sorac, which meant 'the shepherd'. His life had never been an easy one, but the shepherd boy knew no other. His home had none of the beauty of the old traditional settlements that had once been man’s habitat upon the great Aazyrian plains, whose low, thatched, stone-built dwellings once had sheltered quietly under trees, as much a part of nature as the rivers and the mountains that surrounded them.
Now the villages looked parched and ugly, all but bereft of shade and water, surrounded not by green and growing fields but by cracked and dusty earth. The peasants had abandoned the ways of the garden kingdoms and now paid food taxes to the Mykros.
Though the fence enclosing Sorac’s village had long since fallen into disrepair, those who lived there were still under curfew from dusk till dawn, on pain of death. The villagers had to cut trees for firewood so, every year, the crops and pasture grew further from their homes.
When the Emperor needed more soldiers he took them from the villages and towns of Aazyr; sometimes his soldiers ventured south into Llozd. Food was always scarce now in the village, while the Emperor demanded ever more grain to feed his regiments.
The Ukonaai invasion of Aazyr had brought with it a torrent of fear that spread in widening circles from the Emperor Mykros of the Ukonaai and from the terrible weapon that gave him power. Now, with the sacking of the garden kingdom of Aazyr, dear to all Alutia, greedy, imprisoned spirits took vengeance upon all nature, and the garden kingdom had become a barren land, as if the earth itself withheld its fruits from greedy men.
The Royal City of Aazyr, once so splendid, had lapsed now into ugliness and decay. The Ukonaai had none of the sense of beauty of the Aazyrians. Mykros wasted little effort upon the gardens of the White Palace, though the interior was rich and lavish. For Aazyrians, the Royal City had become a dark and frightening place that meant imprisonment and death. They had come to fear the White Palace, and to curse it.
A fresh, cool breeze was blowing from the mountains as today Sorac rose and washed, and gathered his sheep from the pen while the sky was still dark.
Dawn’s first grey fingers probed the night.
The sheep strung out ahead of him along the pale winding road in the uncertain light as he walked behind, driving them to pasture in the mountains. The youthful shepherd was thinking about his mother. She had hurt her knee in a fall and it had never healed properly. She was not an old woman, but frail. She walked with a stick. She had raised Sorac alone. He had never known a father.
He drove his sheep up the narrow mountain path as the sun climbed into a hot blue sky. Soon his shirt was sticking to his back. Sorac’s normal disposition was passive. Most of the younger villagers took turns as herdsmen but he by choice preferred the solitary life of a shepherd. The expression in his eyes always suggested that he was looking at some far-away horizon, perhaps beyond the view of other men, though he exuded no attitude of superiority.
He had grown as a normal boy, suffering the grazed limbs and bruises incurred in the antics and scuffles that were a part of the life of any village boy. Sorac had no real enemies. He also had no real friends. He genuinely seemed to prefer his own company. He was a solitary soul. He spoke quietly and seldom said anything twice.
At mid-morning he sat with his back against a rock and played his reed flute while the sheep grazed peacefully. His brown eyes were open-set in a pleasant face. Dark hair curled down onto lean, sunburned shoulders. The woodwind notes hung and drifted on the stillness of the mountains as morning turned to noon.
He ate his flat corn cakes and drank clear water from a stream and smoked his pipe, and then he sat with his legs crossed and watched the thoughts passing through his mind as if they belonged to someone else. After a while he was not thinking at all; he just existed, like the bracken and the wind.
The day passed.
As the sun sank towards the horizon, the air began to cool so he put on his cloak and calling his sheep he began gathering them for their return to the village before curfew, only to learn that a lamb was missing. He went in search of the missing lamb and found it trapped in a small ravine, bleating pitifully for its mother. Time was against the shepherd when at last he had hoisted the struggling lamb from the narrow crevice into which it had fallen and carried it on his shoulders back to the flock, where it gambolled around its mother with huge glee.
Afternoon shadows lengthened and dusk came quickly.
It was getting late as he hurried the flock down the stony path, eventually topping a last ridge and seeing the thatched roofs of the village below him. The sun was slipping behind the mountains and the western horizon was aflame in red and purple, turning the clouds into islands in the sky.
He was just beginning to herd his sheep down the slope when, from his high vantage point, he spied a band of mounted Ukonaai soldiers fast approaching the village in a cloud of dust on the road.
Sorac began whistling and waving and shouting to raise the alarm but he was lost in shadows and too far from the village – but fortunately also from the soldiers -- for anyone to see or hear him.
The Ukonaai raiders swept into the darkening village. They smashed into the huts, looting whatever they could find. When a door would not open, they set fire to the hut. The old headman tried to protest, but they beat him to the ground and spat and urinated on him.
When a youth, one of Sorac’s friends, attacked them with a sickle, the soldiers knocked him senseless and then bound his wrists. An older man, the youth’s father, tried to intervene with an axe-handle, but was also beaten and tied. After rounding up all the males of military age, the Ukonaai turned their boots upon the old headman where he lay in the dust, curled up in a ball, sticky with his own blood. Helpless, his cries grew faint and finally died away. Still not satisfied, the soldiers to looking for stragglers before riding away, dragging off their captives.
Only when he was sure that they were gone did Sorac finally lead his sheep down the slope into the village, where the headman lay dead. He found his mother and they rushed into one another's arms.
"I am a coward," he said quietly.
"What could you have done?" she asked him.
"I should have come down," he said.
"Then what?” she asked. “You could not have done anything against them. And what would they want with me, a lame old woman like myself? You trusted your instinct. You have always trusted your instinct. It is only when you fail to trust it that it will ever betray you, Sorac. Oh no, my son, you are not a coward.”
He did not reply. He knelt to light the fire. He blew gently on a glowing coal and built it up with twigs.
"Trust it," she repeated.
After the remaining villagers had prepared their poor headman for burial, they shared their food and sorrows. Sorac ate the little in his bowl, then sat alone by the fire outside his hut, a blanket around his shoulders against the chill night wind and smoked his pipe, all the while berating himself as a miserable coward. A cricket shrilled in darkness. The sound drilled into his brain. The air grew colder. He pulled the blanket closer around his chest.
The shepherd sat there for a long time, until a shadow detached itself from the darkness. It came forward into the circle of firelight and Sorac saw the upright hooded figure of an old man. He wore sandals and a plain brown robe, belted at the waist, and he carried a long wooden staff. Dark amethyst eyes burned beneath the hood.
Sorac bowed his head in greeting, waiting, as was the custom, for the elder to speak first.
“Do you know me?” Kierien asked him.
“Father, I do not,” replied the shepherd.
“But I know you, Sorac.”
“You risk the curfew, father. Are you hungry?”
“No,” Kierien said, “I am not here for food.”
A chill wind gusted from the mountains and ruffled the old man's cloak around his shoulders.
''Do you want to hear a story?'' he asked the shepherd.
Sorac was always ready to hear a story. Listening to travellers' tales was his only excursion into the unknown greater world beyond his village.
Kierien took his place beside the fire. Shadows flickered on the ancient parchment of his face as he told the shepherd of how the queen Dylia of Aazyr had given birth to a baby son shortly before she and her husband, the king Dumarion Ben, had died on the night that the Royal City had fallen to Mykros.
The shepherd listened quietly and respectfully. He did not wish to appear rude by telling the stranger that all this was nothing new to him. Only 20 years had passed since Mykros invasion of Aazyr and so the fall of the Royal City was still fresh in the minds of most Aazyrians.
But now Kierien, speaking in a quiet voice, explained how he had carried the infant away from the Royal City and given him into the care of a devout woman -- a follower of the code of the old garden kingdoms -- whose husband had died that night, alongside the king on the walls of the city. Shortly before the invasion, the woman’s own baby had been still-born.
Sorac was starting to enjoy the story He stared into the yellow flames, thinking that the rising brightness of the fire must draw from the heavy, patient wood for its own power to reach upward.
''That baby was you,'' Kierien said.
The statement took a few moments to register, and then Sorac rose indignantly to his feet. “Our headman died today,” he said quietly. “All my friends are taken by the Ukonaai. Yet you have come all this way to taunt me, father? There was no need: I already know I am a coward. Goodnight, father. I must rise early.”
“Come back. Sit down.”
He paused with his back to the old man, his fingers already on the handle of the hut’s door.
“Do not snub me, Sorac.”
Sorac returned to the fire and sat down. He looked at the old man sullenly for a few seconds. Their shadows flickered and jumped in the firelight making eerie patterns against the walls of the hut. He slowly shredded tobacco into his pipe, his mind trying to negotiate the enormity of what he had just been told. Suddenly, in one awful instant of awareness, he knew it was true.
''Yes Sorac. Your real mother was Queen Dylia and your father the king Dumarion Ben of Aazyr,''
Sorac’s heart was pounding. He needed to know more. He wanted to stay calm. He knew there was more to come. He added wood to the fire. He watched the wood bubble and hiss and flare.
When Kierien broke the silence, there was compassion in his voice.
“What do you know about the weapon of Aba Mainyus?”
“It is an ancient myth, father -- a fairy tale.” Sorac explained.
“And I want to hear it.” Kierien said.
“It is a legendary weapon forged in the distant past by Aba Mainyus, the Great Adversary, able to capture and hold forever the souls of those slain by it,” he said: “The souls become part of an army of wraiths, bound in service. The man who wields the sword would have terrible power. But he would be driven mad too.”
''Go on,'' Kierien prompted. ''Tell me the rest.”
Sorac had just been through one of the most traumatizing days in his young life. Who was this man? What did he want? What did it really matter to Sorac who his real mother and father had been? It didn’t change anything. He was a shepherd. The only mother he had ever known was sleeping inside the hut.
He just wanted to forget the conversation and go to bed. Why should this strange old traveller now insist on hearing from him a common fairy tale, known to every child in Aazyr?
“It's said the Angel Chieftain Mycyl created a sword of light and used it to cut away the foundations of the dark continent of Aba Mainyus, which sank into the sea forever,'' Sorac said. He was tired and exasperated: "It was just a myth, a legend."
The old man nodded thoughtfully. “However, like the hard shell of a nut, a legend may protect some truth within, and the weapon of Aba Mainyus does indeed exist," he said. "Moreover, it has come into the possession of Mykros, the Emperor of the Ukonaai. Although the weapon is really an evil force, Mykros perceives it merely as a sword. And it is the source of all his power.”
Sorac wasn’t convinced. And why should it concern him anyway? What good to him was it to know all this? Thoughts and emotions boiled inside him.
“Go on,'' said Kierien.
Sorac shrugged. He’d had enough. “That’s all I know.”
Kierien lips tightened briefly into a quick, rare smile.
“Then I will finish it for you,” he said. “The legend goes on to say that Mycyl placed the sword of light in a cavern of ice and set over it a fierce guardian -- Cebus -- knowing one day the weapon of Aba Mainyus would return to the world of men, and in that day a man would be born to wield the weapon of Mycyl against it.”
The chill night wind plucked at their garments. Thin grey clouds wisped like smoke against the bright stars, pinpricks in the light-bound blackness of the sky.
“Perhaps you are that man, Sorac?”
Sorac moved to get up again but the dark eyes flashed dangerously. The shepherd thumbed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. He held a twig into the fire. He waited for it to flare then lit his pipe and puffed up a cloud of smoke.
“I’m just a shepherd,” he said, at last.
"And the son of a king, too. "
“I’ve never even held a sword.”
“One can learn such things.”
“Father, I cannot do it.”
“Then what will you do?” Kierien said. “You can’t stay here. Unless you wish to join the armies of the Ukonaai?”
Their shadows danced in the firelight. Sorac knocked the ashes out of his pipe against a stone.
"One man alone cannot defeat those armies, father?"
"It must start with one man, Sorac.”
Sorac stared into the fire as if he would find an answer there. It was madness. Finally he lifted his head: "How?"
Kierien nodded: “You must go to the mountain Coreyan, beyond the desert of the Naar, within the Sacred Kingdom of H’zaar Trith, of which it is written that ‘only the pure of heart may enter there, and none that enter ever leave, except the one that wins the sword of Mycyl.’ There you will find the sword.”
“How will I find it?”
Kierien spoke for a long time, speaking in a quiet voice, pausing sometimes to gather his thoughts in order to avoid digressions, and when he was finished silence came between them. A log popped in the flames.
“Then I will try.”
“I know you will,” Kierien said. There was deep sadness in his eyes. “Trust Eloih for all you need. Take nothing with you. Ask nothing of any man. Everything will be provided.”
"When should I leave?"
“Go now, before the sun," Kierien said, rising. "Follow the great south road.”
He slipped back into the shadows.
Already the stars were beginning to fade.
Sorac turned to find his mother standing behind him. She smiled sadly.
“I always knew,” she said.
(end of Chapter Two, Part One)
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Thank you!After the first section with the old man.. I was not expecting the rest. Please be careful . Ppl steal works that aren't copyrighted!! I am also anticipating the next chapter
Chapter Three
Sorac left the village before the sun had risen, bound he knew not where, knowing only his road stretched southward. He carried with him a small bundle containing a spare robe, a knife and some flat corn cakes, though the wise man had advised him to take nothing.
The reason became clear about an hour later when a young woman wearing a plain robe and sandals, stepped out into the dusty road ahead of him, leading a white horse. At first Sorac tried to go around her but she stood in front of him, smiling.
"His name is Liere,” she said. 'It means ‘the wind'."
The powerful creature pricked forward its ears and snorted once quickly through from the great lungs and looked at Sorac with alert brown eyes.
“A handsome animal,” said Sorac.
“He's yours," she said.
"But I can’t ride,” he objected.
“How do you know, unless you try?” she said. “Liere will teach you. He’s a patient fellow.”
He shook his head violently and tried to step around her but she moved and blocked his path.
“He’s Kierien’s gift to you,” she said. "I am a disciple. Open the saddlebags.”
Sorac approached uncertainly. The big horse watched him with liquid brown eyes before lowering its head to eat grass from the roadside. Taking this as a tacit approval, or at least casual disinterest, Sorac cautiously fumbled with the brass buckles of the strong leather saddlebag closest to him. The horse carried on eating grass. as he opened the bag and was able to look inside without taking a wary eye off the heavy hooves that moved around so close to his own feet.
The bags contained food, blankets, gold, tools, a flint and steel for striking fire and all sorts of other provisions – a great wealth to his shepherd’s eyes.
“Kierien has also provided you attire more suitable for riding,” she smiled. “Good boots and trousers.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“Get dressed.” Her eyes twinkled.
The shepherd pulled on the trousers under his robe. It felt very uncomfortable. She removed his robe, yanking it up and over his shoulders then helped him into the heavy shirt. She helped him push his feet into the boots before stashing his old robe and sandals in the saddlebags and then stood back in the road to approve his new look.
Next she handed him a small draw-string leather pouch: "Look inside."
He opened the pouch. It held a rough green crystal that shone with a strange inner light. It was about the thickness of his thumb but a bit shorter - heavy for its size.
“It is the Urinda Stone," she said. "Never lose it. Wear it always around your waist, beneath your shirt. Tie it now.”
Sorac did as he was told.
"Head south,” she told him. “Avoid main roads. Find lyn leaves to protect you in the Lubyar jungle. Reach the forest lands of Kaarth. There you will find friends. From Karth head further south into Llozd, then westward to the Naar.”
He nodded, not understanding anything else but that he should travel southward.
She shrugged: “Get on.”
“How?”
”Give me your foot."
She gave him a leg-up into the saddle. Liere snorted, skin flickering, disdainful of the novice on his back. She guided one of Sorac’s feet into a stirrup. He groped around for the other stirrup and once found was immediately more comfortable.
“Use the stirrups to get on,” she said. “Put your left foot into the left stirrup and then then swing yourself into the saddle.”
He sat there, nodding uncertainly, clinging to the pommel of the saddle with both hands. She picked up the reins: “Hold them lightly. Don’t pull. It will hurt his mouth.”
Sorac leaned over to take the reins from her. She kissed him quickly on the cheek.
“Keep your heels down and your knees pressed against Liere's sides,” she said.
Sorac adjusted his posture.
“Ready?” she asked him. “Try to relax. Liere will help you.”
He took a deep breath.
“Godspeed,” she said, and then gave Liere a light slap.
Liere started to move. The shepherd clung on, swaying in the saddle. He turned desperately to look back at her. She waved. He dared not lift a hand to return the gesture.
As he bounced ungracefully along under the rising sun, clinging desperately to the saddle and wondering who would now help his mother and who would herd the flock, he was often close to tears. Feelings boiled in his heart. But as he progressed he became more comfortable in the saddle and his spirits began to lift. At noon the sun burned down on his shoulders and his passing disturbed small scurrying creatures of the corn.
That night he camped gratefully beneath a tall stone buttress, his thighs and buttocks stiff and sore from the unaccustomed saddle. Because of the curfew he could not make a fire but he ate well from the provisions in the saddlebags. Then, wrapped in a blanket, he lay back and looked up at the stars, while Liere stood nearby, munching corn.
The heavenly infinitude gave the lie to time. What lay ahead he could not tell. However, as a young boy he had climbed the big old meeting tree in the middle of the village. The tree had since been felled for firewood. Once its strong gnarled branches had formed a leafy rest for his youthful body as from their vantage point he had looked out over the roads winding through cornfields green with the rains of spring and golden with the summer sun; the wind had rustled a hand over the cornfields and they had whispered with the wind to the horizon.
Concealed in the embrace of growing wood, the boy had listened to travelers’ tales and myths, while Mykros expanded his tyranny, of the cruel Naar desert and of H’zaar Trith, the Sacred Kingdom, from which no mortal would ever return.
He had heard stories too of the Mynaar Ryn Mountains and of the people of the Forest Lands of Kaarth, the people of the remote Eagle Lands through which he now must pass to reach Llozd, if he was to avoid the main roads, as he had been advised.
At dawn he mounted again, groaning and stiff. But it wasn’t long before he began to settle again into the rhythm of Liere's pace. He was no longer preoccupied with just staying on the horse's back, having realized that Liere had no problem with him being there, had no intention of ditching him by the side of the road and galloping off alone, and was in fact enjoying the company.
At midmorning he rode straight into a group of Ukonaai soldiers. For an instant they faced one another. The thin shepherd, with a handsome mount and fat looking saddlebags, seemed easy prey. But then Liere took off at a gallop. With his heart in his mouth, and considering himself lucky that the Ukonaai were not mounted archers, Sorac laid his head upon Liere’s neck as they seemed literally to fly over the earth, until the Ukonaai drew up their own sweating mounts, abandoning the pursuit.
Sorac spent the rest of the day hiding and carried on his southward journey by moonlight across the Great Plain of Aabyr. For a week he journeyed thus, traveling by night and resting by day, encountering no more patrols. At last he had crossed the Great Plain of Aabyr where the loamy soil began to give way to a pebbly moraine that rolled beneath Liere’s hooves. By now he was approaching the lubyar jungles at the foothills of the Mynar Ryn Mountains, which provided a natural frontier between Aazyr and Llozd, to the south.
Soon he reached the outer fringe of the lubyar forest. Now he no longer feared the Ukonaai for they were desert people who feared the jungles. He stopped beside a stream of clear water that sprang from the cold peaks of the Mynar Ryn Mountains, now barely visible in the south above the forest canopy of trees.
By now his food was starting to run low, for he had feasted in the beginning. Taking a good ash sapling, he split it lengthways and then again split one of the halves. He trimmed the section and then, though he would have liked to have allowed a week or two for it to cure, he bowed it inward with waxed string from the saddlebags. He fashioned straight arrows from river reeds, then tipped them with flint and fletched them with feathers from the remains of a dead fowl he found killed by a fox.
With this bow he soon managed to shoot a large, lazy trout, which he grilled with the sweet yellow fruit of the mejan tree, striking a spark with flint and steel.
By now the shepherd had learned to keep an eye out for fine, dry tinder such as a bird’s fallen nest, then conserve it carefully. Later he smoked his pipe and worked to improve the fletching on his arrows.
In the morning he continued on Liere’s back to find a way into the lubyar forest. Iridescent birds and butterflies startled his senses and strange eyes seemed to watch his passing through the shadowy green realm. The trees grew taller until they closed like a cathedral high above his head. Upon Aelutia were many wild areas not inhabited by man, and seldom visited. The wild creatures that existed there were often strange and sometimes dangerous to man.
++++
Mykros the emperor was the descendant of a tough desert tribe. For thousands of years the Ukonaai had lived as nomads. The desert was their home, the desert was what they knew, and no-one knew the desert as they did. There were few small towns and most were just small oases at the intersection of caravan routes, from where the wandering Ukonaai were able to draw the free supplies they needed that came to them from the garden kingdom of Aazyr in the south. Few Ukonaa people had any wish to put down roots in one fixed place. In fact the opposite was true.
The northern deserts of Aazyr, in spite of their barrenness, were possessed of their own grand beauty – a vastness of sky that purifies the soul, in both its daytime and its night time robes, that only the desert traveler who has experienced it can ever really know or imagine. And one who lives in the desert knows he must always travel across its vastness, for movement is the very nature of existence there.
A life confined to one place was not the life that any Ukonaai would have freely chosen. Yet Mykros had convinced them that they should no longer dwell in dry, waterless tents but live instead amidst green luxury at the heart of the garden kingdom of Aazyr itself.
It was the angry, vengeful spirits entrapped forever by the sword of Aba Mainyus that had corrupted the Ukonaai, through their leader Mykros, and had persuaded them to attack the gentle garden kingdom of Aazyr.
The older Ukonaai generation had often liked to speak of dreams of luxury and wealth, but when the time came to realize the dream, they knew they did not really want it. The free life was what they knew. The vastness of the desert was their home. Their heart was not in Aazyr.
Now the garden kingdom had become barren too. The young generation of Ukonaai were lost and poor and hungry and dissatisfied. Although they had never known the grand freedom of the nomadic life of their fathers, still it was in their blood. But no-one dared complain too loudly, for Mykros crushed dissent without mercy.
To himself alone, in brief periods the emperor would sometimes momentarily concede that all was not well. At times it even entered his heart that once he had been a better and a happier man, but he fiercely drove the thought from his mind. Any nostalgic reference to former, sweeter times drove him to a murderous rage. Books were burned. Intellectuals and aristocrats were murdered. He wished to see the past erased completely.
The ragged and bitter Ukonaai, once so proud in their conquest of all Aazyr, were no longer motivated by the goal of further conquest. Mykros had all that he had ever wanted or dreamed of, but still could never rest. He had gained all a man could want. Once a simple nomad, now he was a powerful and wealthy emperor. He lived in a palace with many women and slaves. Mykros, in fact, had little appetite for further conquest. But the sword drove him on.
He started to conscript slave labour to build ships and tried to feed his people’s discontent with dreams of wealth across the seas, when all they really wanted was a return to their old and simple desert ways. Most of the money he poured into ship building was diverted by corruption and bribery into the purses of officials from highest to lowest, and the few materials that eventually did reach the shipyards in Llozd were of inferior quality. The few vessels that were finally completed and actually put to sea, were often victim to the power of the Southern Ocean, taking their incompetent and poorly paid crews down with them. Mykros didn’t seem to care.
He lived in a twilight world where the line between wraiths and mortals was no longer always clear to him. The bitter spirits bound by the sword would overpower him if he let slip control. He lived with a terrible sense of self-betrayal. It gnawed at his heart and tore at his innards. He despised kind words and platitudes. He disliked most human beings.
Mykros knew that the weapon of Aba Mainyus was corrupting him, and would continue to tighten its grip on his soul. No redeeming light could reach him while he held the sword, and while the sword held him. Any ray of love or light was caught up before it could reach his heart and drawn into a vortex of darkness -- swallowed into its depths. The most important choices in life often have to be made without time to think about them. We are become.
He poured himself a drink at his bar, in a room rich with gilt-framed paintings and thick maroon upholstery. It was the best time of day for him, the early evening, before the palace erupted into revelry of night.
He stood at the bar with his drink. fingering the hilt of the sword that never left his side, remembering how he had first seen it so many years ago in the hands of Ildris, the pale Erlotian wizard who claimed to have used his Erlotian powers to retrieve it from the ocean depths where it had lain for thousands of years.
Mykros himself at that time had been just a petty Ukonaai chieftain, engaged in the usual arguments and skirmishes with other tribes, during which a few lives were sometimes lost, but which never went on for long and were seldom resolved in that both tribes, honour satisfied, went their separate ways.
It was only now, many years later and with victory complete, that Mykros was beginning to understand why Ildris had simply given him the beautiful sword with its indigo blade forged with an unbreakable material that could slice a man’s head from his neck as easily as a flower from its stem, and whose dark energy held the spirits of those it killed. Ildris, Mykros now realized, wanted to use him as a puppet. There Ildris was very deeply mistaken.
He swept back his cloak and threw open the doors to Dumarion Ben’s old balcony where he stood in the gathering twilight, with his hands clasped behind him. Dusk was turning to darkness over the decaying spires and gardens of the Royal City of Aazyr.
He laid his hand on the hilt of the sword, felt its power. He drew the indigo blade from its scabbard and thrust it aloft into the twilight with a shock of ecstasy. There was a chill of autumn in the air.
He slid the sword back into its scabbard and went inside again.
+++++++
The mira bats fell onto Sorac’s head and shoulders without warning from the roof of the forest late in the afternoon, tearing at his flesh with small sharp teeth. Sorac felt his cheek rip before he was even fully aware of what was happening.
He instinctively covered his eyes with his hands, screaming as one of the bats began chewing his right ear. He tried to pull the fierce little creature off with his right hand, while protecting his eyes with his left, but it wouldn’t let go.
Still protecting his eyes with the one hand, he reached for an arrow and thrust blindly upward, impaling the wicked little creature with the point. The mira bat struggled on the arrow, shaking it out of Sorac’s grip. Sorac dropped the shaft, with the mira bat still impaled on it. At this, the other bats left him alone and swarmed instead upon the one he’d speared.
By now Liere was already carrying him swiftly away. Sorac hung on, desperately ducking low branches, sobbing with fear and wiping the blood from his face with the back of his hand.
They reached a small clearing in the lubyar trees, where Liere came to a stop. Sorac instinctively, in the belief that all wild creatures have a fear of fire, retrieved the dry birds nest from the saddle bag hoping a fire would keep the bats away. Gasping with frustration, he flicked again and again at the flint to make a spark and blew desperately at the tinder until a small flame took hold.
He nursed the flame and then he piled it up with wood before trying to treat first his own then Liere’s wounds as best he could with bandages and ointment from the medical kit in the saddlebags. His own right cheek and ear were badly mauled and Liere had some deep lacerations around his head and neck. Sorac wrapped a blanket around Liere’s neck and head to protect those sensitive areas against another attack. He then attended to himself.
It is man’s ability to carry fire that sets him above the animals. The bats no longer bothered them. Sorac stared morbidly into the flames as the wood crackled and spat and thick white smoke billowed up into the green canopy of leaves and vines. Not knowing what to do, he despaired of completing another day’s journey under such conditions.
He poured water into a bowl for Liere who drank it gratefully and then grazed patiently, staying close to the fire, the blanket still wrapped around his head. At that moment Liere and the shepherd became equal companions, united by danger, each one grateful for the other’s abilities.
He worked on his bow and arrows. He sat there, while darkness enveloped him, afraid to sleep lest in his exhaustion he forgot to feed the fire. The mira squabbled in the treetops but dared not approach the fire. He ate some of his remaining food without enjoyment while Liere munched at various leaves close by, experimenting with the different tastes.
At times the shepherd dozed fitfully into a dream of bloody little teeth, waking with a start to splash water on his face, for he was very weary. Finally in the darkest hour, with the night sounds of the jungle all around him, he could no longer keep his eyes open and fell into a deep sleep.
Again he dreamed. This time he did not slip back into the nightmare but dreamed instead that the girl who had met him on the road, now reminded him to boil the leaves of a certain herb which she called lyn, and to drink it –he and Liere both.
On waking and realizing that he was lying under a lyn bush of the type he had seen in his dream, and with nothing to lose by trying, he made a strong brew of the aromatic leaves. He let it cool a bit and then he drank some, and offered some to Liere, who drank the potion without hesitation, though snorting and flicking his ears at the unaccustomed taste.
The shepherd deliberately wandered a discreet distance away from his fire, carefully watching the treetops, with the blanket round his head and shoulders and a knife in each hand. When the mira bats did not attack, he let the fire go right down. When there was still no sign of the bats he decided to continue on his journey, leaving the embers of the fire to smoulder, carefully surrounded by a wall of stones to prevent it spreading, and so that he could dash back to his fireplace if attacked. He drank more of the lyn potion first, to make sure, and gave some to Liere. He then collected a bag full of the fresh leaves and filled a waterskin with what was left of the potion, to take with him.
In the end he was to realize that the lyn bush was fairly common in the lubyar jungle, for such is nature’s way --that often the antidote grows near the poison.
The mira left him alone from then on and the next day’s journey was without event but for the spectacle of forest life around them. The mira sometimes swooped low but they never attacked, and when they started getting too close he shared more of the brew with Liere. He learned that the fresh leaves were more powerful and longer in their effect than the dried ones.
That night he slept more peacefully, continuing his progress again the following morning.
Now they began to climb. The air became finer and the lubyar trees began to thin out a bit. By noon of the next day they began to emerge from the lubyar forest into a new environment of tall conifers the needles of which formed a springy mattress under Liere’s hooves. The stallion grew fresh and restless as the air became colder and the snowy peaks of the Mynar Ryn Mountains became visible in the distance, above the trees.
They were no longer troubled by mira bats but now Sorac’s blood seemed to chill as he realized it was not the mountain air alone that was exciting Liere, for in the gathering dusk, the shepherd sensed another presence, close by, watching, evil but invisible. He shivered. Moreover it was going to rain. Now there was the prospect of a wet night vigil with no dry wood, or to press on through the night towards the mountains.
+++++
He had been riding through the rain in a semi daze, until alerted by Liere’s mood when he became instantly aware of his surroundings, without making any sudden moves. Catching a glimpse of a wolf. in the moonlight, he strung his bow and let fly an arrow, in one swift movement, as if he had done it all his life. The wolf died instantly -- an arrow through its heart.
Immediately the sense of evil that had been with him all night was gone.
Sorac and Liere carefully approached the wolf in the rain. He wanted to make sure the animal was dead; the gentle shepherd did not wish the suffering of any creature
‘That was no ordinary wolf,’ he said to Liere.
As they pushed on upward in the rain, they saw magical deer in the forest. Sorac’s stomach had tasted nothing since the previous morning, but hunger was not enough to caused him to unloose an arrow. Towards morning the rain stopped, and with the rising of the sun they found themselves approaching a mountain pass between icy pinnacles.
Later he shot a fat wild fowl. He made a fire and cooked the bird, then ate it before pushing onward. Though weary, the young shepherd found himself invigorated by the mountain air as they climbed toward the pass. Snow topped mountains towered above the jungle vegetation now far below them.
The rising sun warmed him and dried his clothes. Toward noon they reached the snowline. Soon the path became steep and precarious. Against his right shoulder was a rock face so precipitous it seemed even a squirrel could not climb it while, on his left, the mountain fell thousands of feet down into the forest far below. He decided to walk, leading Liere along the icy path where a slip would mean death.
Ahead, and to the left of them, was a second peak, separated by a chasm. They trod carefully, making for the ridge between the two mountains. Sorac was becoming exhausted. Later in the afternoon the sky began to darken ominously. There was a blizzard approaching and the rocky path offered no shelter. The pass was still a full day’s journey away and so later, when he came upon a cave big enough to shelter both himself and Liere, he considered himself fortunate and breathed a prayer of thanks to the Great Spirit, Eloih.
It was not really a cave but a scooped out undercut in the rock, beneath a sheltering overhang. Making himself as comfortable as possible, after covering Liere with a blanket, he was soon asleep. But within an hour the storm began, and woke him.
All through the night it howled and blew, and all through the next two days it roared, while Sorac dreamed of food and fire, his face swollen purple from the cold, huddled in a blanket, his toes and fingers frozen numb and shivering his only source of warmth.
During the third night the blizzard suddenly died, and when morning came he was able to continue on his way, fortunate to have lost no parts of his body to frostbite, though his toes and fingers burned with pain for hours. But now the going was even more difficult because the path was blocked by snowdrifts.
By nightfall he still had not reached the top of the pass and he was getting weak from hunger. He dared not attempt the dangerous pass in darkness. Shivering violently and with his stomach gnawing at his bones, the shepherd wrapped himself again in his blanket and again sat down to wait, slapping himself to keep warm and wishing he could smoke his pipe but unable to light it.
It was just before midnight when the moon at last began to rise, no longer full but still bright in a cloudless sky. He continued his slow progress in moonlight. Now as they neared the top of the pass the way became broader and he was able to ride again. Ahead of him lay the mountain pass, beyond which he knew he would find the forest people of Kaarth.
When he reached the pass he came to a halt between the two mountains and in the grey pre-dawn looked down upon a small village, tiny with distance, which nestled between the tall trees and a lake whose deep waters reflected the snow-capped mountains that surrounded it.
It took him the whole day to descend however, for the distance was deceptive, and the shadows were already long when he rode down the final slope into the village by the lake.
(end of Book One)
Sorac left the village before the sun had risen, bound he knew not where, knowing only his road stretched southward. He carried with him a small bundle containing a spare robe, a knife and some flat corn cakes, though the wise man had advised him to take nothing.
The reason became clear about an hour later when a young woman wearing a plain robe and sandals, stepped out into the dusty road ahead of him, leading a white horse. At first Sorac tried to go around her but she stood in front of him, smiling.
"His name is Liere,” she said. 'It means ‘the wind'."
The powerful creature pricked forward its ears and snorted once quickly through from the great lungs and looked at Sorac with alert brown eyes.
“A handsome animal,” said Sorac.
“He's yours," she said.
"But I can’t ride,” he objected.
“How do you know, unless you try?” she said. “Liere will teach you. He’s a patient fellow.”
He shook his head violently and tried to step around her but she moved and blocked his path.
“He’s Kierien’s gift to you,” she said. "I am a disciple. Open the saddlebags.”
Sorac approached uncertainly. The big horse watched him with liquid brown eyes before lowering its head to eat grass from the roadside. Taking this as a tacit approval, or at least casual disinterest, Sorac cautiously fumbled with the brass buckles of the strong leather saddlebag closest to him. The horse carried on eating grass. as he opened the bag and was able to look inside without taking a wary eye off the heavy hooves that moved around so close to his own feet.
The bags contained food, blankets, gold, tools, a flint and steel for striking fire and all sorts of other provisions – a great wealth to his shepherd’s eyes.
“Kierien has also provided you attire more suitable for riding,” she smiled. “Good boots and trousers.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“Get dressed.” Her eyes twinkled.
The shepherd pulled on the trousers under his robe. It felt very uncomfortable. She removed his robe, yanking it up and over his shoulders then helped him into the heavy shirt. She helped him push his feet into the boots before stashing his old robe and sandals in the saddlebags and then stood back in the road to approve his new look.
Next she handed him a small draw-string leather pouch: "Look inside."
He opened the pouch. It held a rough green crystal that shone with a strange inner light. It was about the thickness of his thumb but a bit shorter - heavy for its size.
“It is the Urinda Stone," she said. "Never lose it. Wear it always around your waist, beneath your shirt. Tie it now.”
Sorac did as he was told.
"Head south,” she told him. “Avoid main roads. Find lyn leaves to protect you in the Lubyar jungle. Reach the forest lands of Kaarth. There you will find friends. From Karth head further south into Llozd, then westward to the Naar.”
He nodded, not understanding anything else but that he should travel southward.
She shrugged: “Get on.”
“How?”
”Give me your foot."
She gave him a leg-up into the saddle. Liere snorted, skin flickering, disdainful of the novice on his back. She guided one of Sorac’s feet into a stirrup. He groped around for the other stirrup and once found was immediately more comfortable.
“Use the stirrups to get on,” she said. “Put your left foot into the left stirrup and then then swing yourself into the saddle.”
He sat there, nodding uncertainly, clinging to the pommel of the saddle with both hands. She picked up the reins: “Hold them lightly. Don’t pull. It will hurt his mouth.”
Sorac leaned over to take the reins from her. She kissed him quickly on the cheek.
“Keep your heels down and your knees pressed against Liere's sides,” she said.
Sorac adjusted his posture.
“Ready?” she asked him. “Try to relax. Liere will help you.”
He took a deep breath.
“Godspeed,” she said, and then gave Liere a light slap.
Liere started to move. The shepherd clung on, swaying in the saddle. He turned desperately to look back at her. She waved. He dared not lift a hand to return the gesture.
As he bounced ungracefully along under the rising sun, clinging desperately to the saddle and wondering who would now help his mother and who would herd the flock, he was often close to tears. Feelings boiled in his heart. But as he progressed he became more comfortable in the saddle and his spirits began to lift. At noon the sun burned down on his shoulders and his passing disturbed small scurrying creatures of the corn.
That night he camped gratefully beneath a tall stone buttress, his thighs and buttocks stiff and sore from the unaccustomed saddle. Because of the curfew he could not make a fire but he ate well from the provisions in the saddlebags. Then, wrapped in a blanket, he lay back and looked up at the stars, while Liere stood nearby, munching corn.
The heavenly infinitude gave the lie to time. What lay ahead he could not tell. However, as a young boy he had climbed the big old meeting tree in the middle of the village. The tree had since been felled for firewood. Once its strong gnarled branches had formed a leafy rest for his youthful body as from their vantage point he had looked out over the roads winding through cornfields green with the rains of spring and golden with the summer sun; the wind had rustled a hand over the cornfields and they had whispered with the wind to the horizon.
Concealed in the embrace of growing wood, the boy had listened to travelers’ tales and myths, while Mykros expanded his tyranny, of the cruel Naar desert and of H’zaar Trith, the Sacred Kingdom, from which no mortal would ever return.
He had heard stories too of the Mynaar Ryn Mountains and of the people of the Forest Lands of Kaarth, the people of the remote Eagle Lands through which he now must pass to reach Llozd, if he was to avoid the main roads, as he had been advised.
At dawn he mounted again, groaning and stiff. But it wasn’t long before he began to settle again into the rhythm of Liere's pace. He was no longer preoccupied with just staying on the horse's back, having realized that Liere had no problem with him being there, had no intention of ditching him by the side of the road and galloping off alone, and was in fact enjoying the company.
At midmorning he rode straight into a group of Ukonaai soldiers. For an instant they faced one another. The thin shepherd, with a handsome mount and fat looking saddlebags, seemed easy prey. But then Liere took off at a gallop. With his heart in his mouth, and considering himself lucky that the Ukonaai were not mounted archers, Sorac laid his head upon Liere’s neck as they seemed literally to fly over the earth, until the Ukonaai drew up their own sweating mounts, abandoning the pursuit.
Sorac spent the rest of the day hiding and carried on his southward journey by moonlight across the Great Plain of Aabyr. For a week he journeyed thus, traveling by night and resting by day, encountering no more patrols. At last he had crossed the Great Plain of Aabyr where the loamy soil began to give way to a pebbly moraine that rolled beneath Liere’s hooves. By now he was approaching the lubyar jungles at the foothills of the Mynar Ryn Mountains, which provided a natural frontier between Aazyr and Llozd, to the south.
Soon he reached the outer fringe of the lubyar forest. Now he no longer feared the Ukonaai for they were desert people who feared the jungles. He stopped beside a stream of clear water that sprang from the cold peaks of the Mynar Ryn Mountains, now barely visible in the south above the forest canopy of trees.
By now his food was starting to run low, for he had feasted in the beginning. Taking a good ash sapling, he split it lengthways and then again split one of the halves. He trimmed the section and then, though he would have liked to have allowed a week or two for it to cure, he bowed it inward with waxed string from the saddlebags. He fashioned straight arrows from river reeds, then tipped them with flint and fletched them with feathers from the remains of a dead fowl he found killed by a fox.
With this bow he soon managed to shoot a large, lazy trout, which he grilled with the sweet yellow fruit of the mejan tree, striking a spark with flint and steel.
By now the shepherd had learned to keep an eye out for fine, dry tinder such as a bird’s fallen nest, then conserve it carefully. Later he smoked his pipe and worked to improve the fletching on his arrows.
In the morning he continued on Liere’s back to find a way into the lubyar forest. Iridescent birds and butterflies startled his senses and strange eyes seemed to watch his passing through the shadowy green realm. The trees grew taller until they closed like a cathedral high above his head. Upon Aelutia were many wild areas not inhabited by man, and seldom visited. The wild creatures that existed there were often strange and sometimes dangerous to man.
++++
Mykros the emperor was the descendant of a tough desert tribe. For thousands of years the Ukonaai had lived as nomads. The desert was their home, the desert was what they knew, and no-one knew the desert as they did. There were few small towns and most were just small oases at the intersection of caravan routes, from where the wandering Ukonaai were able to draw the free supplies they needed that came to them from the garden kingdom of Aazyr in the south. Few Ukonaa people had any wish to put down roots in one fixed place. In fact the opposite was true.
The northern deserts of Aazyr, in spite of their barrenness, were possessed of their own grand beauty – a vastness of sky that purifies the soul, in both its daytime and its night time robes, that only the desert traveler who has experienced it can ever really know or imagine. And one who lives in the desert knows he must always travel across its vastness, for movement is the very nature of existence there.
A life confined to one place was not the life that any Ukonaai would have freely chosen. Yet Mykros had convinced them that they should no longer dwell in dry, waterless tents but live instead amidst green luxury at the heart of the garden kingdom of Aazyr itself.
It was the angry, vengeful spirits entrapped forever by the sword of Aba Mainyus that had corrupted the Ukonaai, through their leader Mykros, and had persuaded them to attack the gentle garden kingdom of Aazyr.
The older Ukonaai generation had often liked to speak of dreams of luxury and wealth, but when the time came to realize the dream, they knew they did not really want it. The free life was what they knew. The vastness of the desert was their home. Their heart was not in Aazyr.
Now the garden kingdom had become barren too. The young generation of Ukonaai were lost and poor and hungry and dissatisfied. Although they had never known the grand freedom of the nomadic life of their fathers, still it was in their blood. But no-one dared complain too loudly, for Mykros crushed dissent without mercy.
To himself alone, in brief periods the emperor would sometimes momentarily concede that all was not well. At times it even entered his heart that once he had been a better and a happier man, but he fiercely drove the thought from his mind. Any nostalgic reference to former, sweeter times drove him to a murderous rage. Books were burned. Intellectuals and aristocrats were murdered. He wished to see the past erased completely.
The ragged and bitter Ukonaai, once so proud in their conquest of all Aazyr, were no longer motivated by the goal of further conquest. Mykros had all that he had ever wanted or dreamed of, but still could never rest. He had gained all a man could want. Once a simple nomad, now he was a powerful and wealthy emperor. He lived in a palace with many women and slaves. Mykros, in fact, had little appetite for further conquest. But the sword drove him on.
He started to conscript slave labour to build ships and tried to feed his people’s discontent with dreams of wealth across the seas, when all they really wanted was a return to their old and simple desert ways. Most of the money he poured into ship building was diverted by corruption and bribery into the purses of officials from highest to lowest, and the few materials that eventually did reach the shipyards in Llozd were of inferior quality. The few vessels that were finally completed and actually put to sea, were often victim to the power of the Southern Ocean, taking their incompetent and poorly paid crews down with them. Mykros didn’t seem to care.
He lived in a twilight world where the line between wraiths and mortals was no longer always clear to him. The bitter spirits bound by the sword would overpower him if he let slip control. He lived with a terrible sense of self-betrayal. It gnawed at his heart and tore at his innards. He despised kind words and platitudes. He disliked most human beings.
Mykros knew that the weapon of Aba Mainyus was corrupting him, and would continue to tighten its grip on his soul. No redeeming light could reach him while he held the sword, and while the sword held him. Any ray of love or light was caught up before it could reach his heart and drawn into a vortex of darkness -- swallowed into its depths. The most important choices in life often have to be made without time to think about them. We are become.
He poured himself a drink at his bar, in a room rich with gilt-framed paintings and thick maroon upholstery. It was the best time of day for him, the early evening, before the palace erupted into revelry of night.
He stood at the bar with his drink. fingering the hilt of the sword that never left his side, remembering how he had first seen it so many years ago in the hands of Ildris, the pale Erlotian wizard who claimed to have used his Erlotian powers to retrieve it from the ocean depths where it had lain for thousands of years.
Mykros himself at that time had been just a petty Ukonaai chieftain, engaged in the usual arguments and skirmishes with other tribes, during which a few lives were sometimes lost, but which never went on for long and were seldom resolved in that both tribes, honour satisfied, went their separate ways.
It was only now, many years later and with victory complete, that Mykros was beginning to understand why Ildris had simply given him the beautiful sword with its indigo blade forged with an unbreakable material that could slice a man’s head from his neck as easily as a flower from its stem, and whose dark energy held the spirits of those it killed. Ildris, Mykros now realized, wanted to use him as a puppet. There Ildris was very deeply mistaken.
He swept back his cloak and threw open the doors to Dumarion Ben’s old balcony where he stood in the gathering twilight, with his hands clasped behind him. Dusk was turning to darkness over the decaying spires and gardens of the Royal City of Aazyr.
He laid his hand on the hilt of the sword, felt its power. He drew the indigo blade from its scabbard and thrust it aloft into the twilight with a shock of ecstasy. There was a chill of autumn in the air.
He slid the sword back into its scabbard and went inside again.
+++++++
The mira bats fell onto Sorac’s head and shoulders without warning from the roof of the forest late in the afternoon, tearing at his flesh with small sharp teeth. Sorac felt his cheek rip before he was even fully aware of what was happening.
He instinctively covered his eyes with his hands, screaming as one of the bats began chewing his right ear. He tried to pull the fierce little creature off with his right hand, while protecting his eyes with his left, but it wouldn’t let go.
Still protecting his eyes with the one hand, he reached for an arrow and thrust blindly upward, impaling the wicked little creature with the point. The mira bat struggled on the arrow, shaking it out of Sorac’s grip. Sorac dropped the shaft, with the mira bat still impaled on it. At this, the other bats left him alone and swarmed instead upon the one he’d speared.
By now Liere was already carrying him swiftly away. Sorac hung on, desperately ducking low branches, sobbing with fear and wiping the blood from his face with the back of his hand.
They reached a small clearing in the lubyar trees, where Liere came to a stop. Sorac instinctively, in the belief that all wild creatures have a fear of fire, retrieved the dry birds nest from the saddle bag hoping a fire would keep the bats away. Gasping with frustration, he flicked again and again at the flint to make a spark and blew desperately at the tinder until a small flame took hold.
He nursed the flame and then he piled it up with wood before trying to treat first his own then Liere’s wounds as best he could with bandages and ointment from the medical kit in the saddlebags. His own right cheek and ear were badly mauled and Liere had some deep lacerations around his head and neck. Sorac wrapped a blanket around Liere’s neck and head to protect those sensitive areas against another attack. He then attended to himself.
It is man’s ability to carry fire that sets him above the animals. The bats no longer bothered them. Sorac stared morbidly into the flames as the wood crackled and spat and thick white smoke billowed up into the green canopy of leaves and vines. Not knowing what to do, he despaired of completing another day’s journey under such conditions.
He poured water into a bowl for Liere who drank it gratefully and then grazed patiently, staying close to the fire, the blanket still wrapped around his head. At that moment Liere and the shepherd became equal companions, united by danger, each one grateful for the other’s abilities.
He worked on his bow and arrows. He sat there, while darkness enveloped him, afraid to sleep lest in his exhaustion he forgot to feed the fire. The mira squabbled in the treetops but dared not approach the fire. He ate some of his remaining food without enjoyment while Liere munched at various leaves close by, experimenting with the different tastes.
At times the shepherd dozed fitfully into a dream of bloody little teeth, waking with a start to splash water on his face, for he was very weary. Finally in the darkest hour, with the night sounds of the jungle all around him, he could no longer keep his eyes open and fell into a deep sleep.
Again he dreamed. This time he did not slip back into the nightmare but dreamed instead that the girl who had met him on the road, now reminded him to boil the leaves of a certain herb which she called lyn, and to drink it –he and Liere both.
On waking and realizing that he was lying under a lyn bush of the type he had seen in his dream, and with nothing to lose by trying, he made a strong brew of the aromatic leaves. He let it cool a bit and then he drank some, and offered some to Liere, who drank the potion without hesitation, though snorting and flicking his ears at the unaccustomed taste.
The shepherd deliberately wandered a discreet distance away from his fire, carefully watching the treetops, with the blanket round his head and shoulders and a knife in each hand. When the mira bats did not attack, he let the fire go right down. When there was still no sign of the bats he decided to continue on his journey, leaving the embers of the fire to smoulder, carefully surrounded by a wall of stones to prevent it spreading, and so that he could dash back to his fireplace if attacked. He drank more of the lyn potion first, to make sure, and gave some to Liere. He then collected a bag full of the fresh leaves and filled a waterskin with what was left of the potion, to take with him.
In the end he was to realize that the lyn bush was fairly common in the lubyar jungle, for such is nature’s way --that often the antidote grows near the poison.
The mira left him alone from then on and the next day’s journey was without event but for the spectacle of forest life around them. The mira sometimes swooped low but they never attacked, and when they started getting too close he shared more of the brew with Liere. He learned that the fresh leaves were more powerful and longer in their effect than the dried ones.
That night he slept more peacefully, continuing his progress again the following morning.
Now they began to climb. The air became finer and the lubyar trees began to thin out a bit. By noon of the next day they began to emerge from the lubyar forest into a new environment of tall conifers the needles of which formed a springy mattress under Liere’s hooves. The stallion grew fresh and restless as the air became colder and the snowy peaks of the Mynar Ryn Mountains became visible in the distance, above the trees.
They were no longer troubled by mira bats but now Sorac’s blood seemed to chill as he realized it was not the mountain air alone that was exciting Liere, for in the gathering dusk, the shepherd sensed another presence, close by, watching, evil but invisible. He shivered. Moreover it was going to rain. Now there was the prospect of a wet night vigil with no dry wood, or to press on through the night towards the mountains.
+++++
He had been riding through the rain in a semi daze, until alerted by Liere’s mood when he became instantly aware of his surroundings, without making any sudden moves. Catching a glimpse of a wolf. in the moonlight, he strung his bow and let fly an arrow, in one swift movement, as if he had done it all his life. The wolf died instantly -- an arrow through its heart.
Immediately the sense of evil that had been with him all night was gone.
Sorac and Liere carefully approached the wolf in the rain. He wanted to make sure the animal was dead; the gentle shepherd did not wish the suffering of any creature
‘That was no ordinary wolf,’ he said to Liere.
As they pushed on upward in the rain, they saw magical deer in the forest. Sorac’s stomach had tasted nothing since the previous morning, but hunger was not enough to caused him to unloose an arrow. Towards morning the rain stopped, and with the rising of the sun they found themselves approaching a mountain pass between icy pinnacles.
Later he shot a fat wild fowl. He made a fire and cooked the bird, then ate it before pushing onward. Though weary, the young shepherd found himself invigorated by the mountain air as they climbed toward the pass. Snow topped mountains towered above the jungle vegetation now far below them.
The rising sun warmed him and dried his clothes. Toward noon they reached the snowline. Soon the path became steep and precarious. Against his right shoulder was a rock face so precipitous it seemed even a squirrel could not climb it while, on his left, the mountain fell thousands of feet down into the forest far below. He decided to walk, leading Liere along the icy path where a slip would mean death.
Ahead, and to the left of them, was a second peak, separated by a chasm. They trod carefully, making for the ridge between the two mountains. Sorac was becoming exhausted. Later in the afternoon the sky began to darken ominously. There was a blizzard approaching and the rocky path offered no shelter. The pass was still a full day’s journey away and so later, when he came upon a cave big enough to shelter both himself and Liere, he considered himself fortunate and breathed a prayer of thanks to the Great Spirit, Eloih.
It was not really a cave but a scooped out undercut in the rock, beneath a sheltering overhang. Making himself as comfortable as possible, after covering Liere with a blanket, he was soon asleep. But within an hour the storm began, and woke him.
All through the night it howled and blew, and all through the next two days it roared, while Sorac dreamed of food and fire, his face swollen purple from the cold, huddled in a blanket, his toes and fingers frozen numb and shivering his only source of warmth.
During the third night the blizzard suddenly died, and when morning came he was able to continue on his way, fortunate to have lost no parts of his body to frostbite, though his toes and fingers burned with pain for hours. But now the going was even more difficult because the path was blocked by snowdrifts.
By nightfall he still had not reached the top of the pass and he was getting weak from hunger. He dared not attempt the dangerous pass in darkness. Shivering violently and with his stomach gnawing at his bones, the shepherd wrapped himself again in his blanket and again sat down to wait, slapping himself to keep warm and wishing he could smoke his pipe but unable to light it.
It was just before midnight when the moon at last began to rise, no longer full but still bright in a cloudless sky. He continued his slow progress in moonlight. Now as they neared the top of the pass the way became broader and he was able to ride again. Ahead of him lay the mountain pass, beyond which he knew he would find the forest people of Kaarth.
When he reached the pass he came to a halt between the two mountains and in the grey pre-dawn looked down upon a small village, tiny with distance, which nestled between the tall trees and a lake whose deep waters reflected the snow-capped mountains that surrounded it.
It took him the whole day to descend however, for the distance was deceptive, and the shadows were already long when he rode down the final slope into the village by the lake.
(end of Book One)
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ERLOS
Book One: Two Worlds
Part Two: Eldrinda of Erlos
Chapter Four
Eldrinda was alone in the room. Alone was how he mostly was, and alone was how he mostly liked to be.
He directed his thoughts to his headset to zoom in closer upon the image projected directly into his mind of the view of the Blue Planet as it turned like a beautiful jewel, silent and alone, altogether peaceful and perfect, wreathed by white cloudbanks and lit by a golden sun, within the obsidian vault of cold black space.
He was a little over 200 years old, and still quite young for an Erlotian. Like all Erlotians his body was completely hairless. His head was topped with the distinctive Erlotian triple ridge. As with most Erlotian males, the side bulges on his head were the more prominent ones
At that moment he heard the door click quietly open behind him and footsteps came quickly across the floor. Eldrinda turned in his chair to see who had intruded without knocking, but relaxed when he saw Sumadji.
He paused the projection and took off his headset: “What is it?”
Sumadji hesitated for a moment before speaking. "It's Shelron," he said.
His face told Eldrinda the rest.
“By all accounts he felt no pain and died instantly,” Sumadji said.
Eldrinda hung his head for a moment, trying to absorb the news. He had deeply respected and perhaps even loved his father Shelron, the H'rothl, or overall elected ruler of Erlos. But his father had been a fighter, so Eldrinda was not unprepared for news. In fact, he was always expecting it to come.
“I’m sorry,” Sumadji said.
“Does my sister know?”
Sumadji shook his head. The two had been friends since childhood.
Eldrinda stood, “I’ll tell her.”
He moved over to the transceiver and opened the door and sat down. The door closed and Eldrinda ran quickly through the safety checks before setting his destination from the list of choices available on the screen, then with the heels of his hands he pressed the buttons on the armrests.
A few seconds of particle awareness followed -- an experience that could be frightening at first as his body became increasingly transparent and then vanished from the chair, before beginning to re-materialize in a similar module in Astra City’s palace.
He waited for the door lock to deactivate and then he strode along the corridors of the palace beneath emotionless spheres of cold, eternal light. His thoughts were tangled inside him and his stomach felt empty as he climbed a stairwell.
He paused beneath a painting of his parents. His mother had died peacefully a few years earlier at the age of 310. His father, always a rather dour man, had daily become more indrawn and taciturn without her.
Now, for Eldrinda, questions trammelled him on all sides. Eldrinda was a scholar and a scientist. The only traits he had really shared with his late father were a moody disposition and a plain, often pessimistic attitude to life. Shelron, like many soldiers had mistrusted most scholarship, particularly that of his own son. But Eldrinda was of a new generation, and was a person constantly fired with new ideas.
He climbed the last few stairs and rang to enter his sister’s chambers. The door opened and he went in.
Auldrius was seated at her dressing table. Her blue eyes met his first in the mirror, then she smiled and turned to face him: “Eldrinda?”
“Sad news,” he said.
Realization dawned immediately; her eyes flooded with tears: “Father?”
He held her while she sobbed against his chest.
My probe got through,” he said. “I’m getting images of the Blue Planet.”
“Eldrinda!” She pushed him away. “What on earth has that to do with our father’s death?”
“It’s a world just like our own,” he told her.
“Forget about your blue world for a while now!” She dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. “The Council of Elders will be assembling,” she said. “We cannot be without a leader.”
“I’m not ready for this,” he said
“You have to be.”
++++++
A red light glowed outside the door of the particle transceiver, indicating that Auldrius’ body had not yet fully materialized at the other end. Eldrinda waited until the red light winked out and a green light came on as the lock released with a quiet click. He opened the door and got in.
A few seconds later, as he stepped out of the transceiver into Astra City's great hall. He was still thinking about the lovely blue world he had seen earlier. He paused to look up through the magnificent transparent skydome which spanned the whole of the great hall -- a window through which one could see the stars and where the planet Aelutia loomed above them all. The grandeur of the view from space was lost on most Elotians, who simply took it or granted. Eldrinda watched the huge brown landmass of the continent of Aazyr slowly turning into view. The eastern coastline of the continent was partially obscured by great white cloudbanks, lit by the sun against the cold black curtain of space.
He looked around the hall.
Sumadji was there ahead of him, standing talking quietly with his sister Aldrius. At the far end of the hall Erlos’ Council of Elders were assembling, beneath the golden firebird crest of Astra City.
Astra City was one of seven cities floating in space above the atmosphere of planet Aleutia. Together these seven cities formed the Erlotian civilisation. The first of these cities had been colonized from Aleutia several millennia before, and the space-dwelling Erlotians now had little in common with the technologically inferior planet-dwelling Aleutian races, who plowed their fields with oxen, and from whom all the Erlotian peoples were originally descended.
Eldrinda first greeted Sumadji, then addressed his sister: “I hope I know how to handle this.”
“Why do you always doubt yourself?” said Aldrius. She straightened his collar, then stretched up on her toes to kiss him quickly on the cheek. Auldrius was dark and petite and the blue of her garments emphasized her lovely blue eyes.
Before he could think of a reply, Kierien of Centura City -- the leader of the Erlotian Council of Elders – beckoned Eldrinda to come forward.
Kierien was ancient, even in Erlotian terms -- though quite how old only he himself knew. Although his face was deeply creased with age, Kierien's back was strong and still. His eyes were tthe colour of amethyst, and he wore the purple robes of Centura City. Kierien held in his hands a small silver flask.
He put the flask down carefully on a white stone shelf behind the throne and then he beckoned to Eldrinda. Eldrinda, like his sister, was wearing the royal blue colours of Astra City’s Solastra state.
“Please kneel,” said Kierien.
On one side of the firebird throne of Astra city there was a cabinet which held the Rod of Authority of Erlos. Kierien unlocked the cabinet and came back with the Rod of Authority and stood in front of Eldrinda.
“Eldrinda Benkilte, are you ready today to take the coronation vows?” he asked.
Eldrinda nodded.
''Please speak your answer,'' Kierien said.
“I ... yes I am.”
“Eldrinda Benkilte,'' said Kierien ''Place your right hand upon The Rod of Authority and repeat after me the vows your forefathers have written down.”
Eldrinda recited the simple vows: “As ruler of Erlos I vow never to touch strong drink. I vow never to surrender in battle. As ruler of Erlos I vow before the elders of Erlos and before the Great Spirit Eloih to rule justly according to the laws of Erlos.”
Kierien turned to the Council of Elders: “Have you witnessed that these vows have been made in the proper order and are valid?”
“We have.”
Next Kierien poured a little of the oil from the flask onto Eldrinda’s head: “Stand up, Eldrinda Hrothl. May the Great Spirit Eloih bless you and help you keep the vows that you have made today, which were witnessed by at least three people.”
Eldrinda rose and Kierien handed him the Rod of Authority: “You seem uncertain, my friend?”
“I am,” Eldrinda replied. “My father set such high standards which I cannot hope to attain.”
“But you can try,” said Kierien.
+++++++++++
After the emergency ceremony Eldrinda Benkilte stood with his sister Auldrius on the balcony of her apartment overlooking the gardens of Astra City. Her small hands gripped the smooth metal railing of the balcony. The night was warm. Flying vehicles flitted like brightly coloured insects between immense towers and graceful curving walkways. At this time, Erlos had been at war with Bueloess for 600 years.
The inner levels of Astra city, where gravity was weakest, were reserved for the great vortexian engines and the machinery controlling weather, and for the low-gravity workshops and factories.
Shelron had been a wise and respected Hrothl, though a unyielding one at times. Eldrinda was regarded as something of a dreamer and never short of ideas, although getting them past Erlos’ Council of Seven was something else entirely.
But Auldrius was worried. She knew there were two Eldrindas; there was the likable, unpretentious Eldrinda, always polite and courteous, who easily made friends with everyone – and then there was the distant Eldrinda who withdrew into himself for days at a time, and could enter a room so deep in thought that he would seem would look right through a person greeting him, as if there was nobody there. Lately the second Eldrinda seemed to be taking over. Her brother's mind was far away from the important job in hand.
The fact of their father’s death and its immediate consequences seemed to be just a bit of nuisance to him at the moment – coming as it did on the same day as his first positive view of the ‘blue world’ that had been obsessing him for years. The distant blue world seemed to be claiming a lot more of his attention than the world in which he actually lived at the moment. But there are countless of worlds out there, she thought. Why should he be so concerned with just one world, so far away?
She watched his face as he stood gazing out into the dark trees. 'What is he thinking?' she asked herself.
In fact Eldrinda was trying move the hurried events of the last few hours into a back shelf box in his mind, trying to free his brain to concentrate on the equations whirling around inside it: 'The time dichotomy just doesn't make sense,' he was thinking. 'The equations run to infinity. The light seems to be reversed. It's coming back on itself.'
“Do you have any immediate plans?” She asked him.
At first she thought he was going to ignore her and was just about to repeat the question when he lifted troubled grey eyes to meet hers, as if it was an effort: “Just to end this war,” he said.
Her eyes widened in mock surprise: “Immediately?”
He looked away and stared into the trees. For a moment she thought he had taken offence. But it was not his nature to concern himself with personal ego trivialities. He shrugged.
“You know my ideas,” he said.
The idea of taking the attack to the enemy instead of fighting a purely defensive war had strong support in their own city, Astra City, but even their late father had not been able to steer it through Erlos’ Council of Seven.
“It’s just so terribly risky,” she said.
“Worse to delay what must be done eventually.”
“Probably,” she agreed.
“So many dead,” Eldrinda said, “Now him.”
'It seems to be located in a sort of loop, or fold, in the time/space matrix,' he was thinking. 'Like walking through a mirror and finding another mirror reflecting back on the other side.'
He realized she was crying again. He put an arm around her shoulders: “He wouldn’t want tears.”
“I know.” She blew her nose on a tissue.
They went inside together and ate a simple meal in near silence. Afterwards she hugged him, “Try to get some sleep now. Your blue world will still be there tomorrow.”
He nodded.
She kissed his cheek, “Just be careful.”
(end of Chapter Four)
Book One: Two Worlds
Part Two: Eldrinda of Erlos
Chapter Four
Eldrinda was alone in the room. Alone was how he mostly was, and alone was how he mostly liked to be.
He directed his thoughts to his headset to zoom in closer upon the image projected directly into his mind of the view of the Blue Planet as it turned like a beautiful jewel, silent and alone, altogether peaceful and perfect, wreathed by white cloudbanks and lit by a golden sun, within the obsidian vault of cold black space.
He was a little over 200 years old, and still quite young for an Erlotian. Like all Erlotians his body was completely hairless. His head was topped with the distinctive Erlotian triple ridge. As with most Erlotian males, the side bulges on his head were the more prominent ones
At that moment he heard the door click quietly open behind him and footsteps came quickly across the floor. Eldrinda turned in his chair to see who had intruded without knocking, but relaxed when he saw Sumadji.
He paused the projection and took off his headset: “What is it?”
Sumadji hesitated for a moment before speaking. "It's Shelron," he said.
His face told Eldrinda the rest.
“By all accounts he felt no pain and died instantly,” Sumadji said.
Eldrinda hung his head for a moment, trying to absorb the news. He had deeply respected and perhaps even loved his father Shelron, the H'rothl, or overall elected ruler of Erlos. But his father had been a fighter, so Eldrinda was not unprepared for news. In fact, he was always expecting it to come.
“I’m sorry,” Sumadji said.
“Does my sister know?”
Sumadji shook his head. The two had been friends since childhood.
Eldrinda stood, “I’ll tell her.”
He moved over to the transceiver and opened the door and sat down. The door closed and Eldrinda ran quickly through the safety checks before setting his destination from the list of choices available on the screen, then with the heels of his hands he pressed the buttons on the armrests.
A few seconds of particle awareness followed -- an experience that could be frightening at first as his body became increasingly transparent and then vanished from the chair, before beginning to re-materialize in a similar module in Astra City’s palace.
He waited for the door lock to deactivate and then he strode along the corridors of the palace beneath emotionless spheres of cold, eternal light. His thoughts were tangled inside him and his stomach felt empty as he climbed a stairwell.
He paused beneath a painting of his parents. His mother had died peacefully a few years earlier at the age of 310. His father, always a rather dour man, had daily become more indrawn and taciturn without her.
Now, for Eldrinda, questions trammelled him on all sides. Eldrinda was a scholar and a scientist. The only traits he had really shared with his late father were a moody disposition and a plain, often pessimistic attitude to life. Shelron, like many soldiers had mistrusted most scholarship, particularly that of his own son. But Eldrinda was of a new generation, and was a person constantly fired with new ideas.
He climbed the last few stairs and rang to enter his sister’s chambers. The door opened and he went in.
Auldrius was seated at her dressing table. Her blue eyes met his first in the mirror, then she smiled and turned to face him: “Eldrinda?”
“Sad news,” he said.
Realization dawned immediately; her eyes flooded with tears: “Father?”
He held her while she sobbed against his chest.
My probe got through,” he said. “I’m getting images of the Blue Planet.”
“Eldrinda!” She pushed him away. “What on earth has that to do with our father’s death?”
“It’s a world just like our own,” he told her.
“Forget about your blue world for a while now!” She dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. “The Council of Elders will be assembling,” she said. “We cannot be without a leader.”
“I’m not ready for this,” he said
“You have to be.”
++++++
A red light glowed outside the door of the particle transceiver, indicating that Auldrius’ body had not yet fully materialized at the other end. Eldrinda waited until the red light winked out and a green light came on as the lock released with a quiet click. He opened the door and got in.
A few seconds later, as he stepped out of the transceiver into Astra City's great hall. He was still thinking about the lovely blue world he had seen earlier. He paused to look up through the magnificent transparent skydome which spanned the whole of the great hall -- a window through which one could see the stars and where the planet Aelutia loomed above them all. The grandeur of the view from space was lost on most Elotians, who simply took it or granted. Eldrinda watched the huge brown landmass of the continent of Aazyr slowly turning into view. The eastern coastline of the continent was partially obscured by great white cloudbanks, lit by the sun against the cold black curtain of space.
He looked around the hall.
Sumadji was there ahead of him, standing talking quietly with his sister Aldrius. At the far end of the hall Erlos’ Council of Elders were assembling, beneath the golden firebird crest of Astra City.
Astra City was one of seven cities floating in space above the atmosphere of planet Aleutia. Together these seven cities formed the Erlotian civilisation. The first of these cities had been colonized from Aleutia several millennia before, and the space-dwelling Erlotians now had little in common with the technologically inferior planet-dwelling Aleutian races, who plowed their fields with oxen, and from whom all the Erlotian peoples were originally descended.
Eldrinda first greeted Sumadji, then addressed his sister: “I hope I know how to handle this.”
“Why do you always doubt yourself?” said Aldrius. She straightened his collar, then stretched up on her toes to kiss him quickly on the cheek. Auldrius was dark and petite and the blue of her garments emphasized her lovely blue eyes.
Before he could think of a reply, Kierien of Centura City -- the leader of the Erlotian Council of Elders – beckoned Eldrinda to come forward.
Kierien was ancient, even in Erlotian terms -- though quite how old only he himself knew. Although his face was deeply creased with age, Kierien's back was strong and still. His eyes were tthe colour of amethyst, and he wore the purple robes of Centura City. Kierien held in his hands a small silver flask.
He put the flask down carefully on a white stone shelf behind the throne and then he beckoned to Eldrinda. Eldrinda, like his sister, was wearing the royal blue colours of Astra City’s Solastra state.
“Please kneel,” said Kierien.
On one side of the firebird throne of Astra city there was a cabinet which held the Rod of Authority of Erlos. Kierien unlocked the cabinet and came back with the Rod of Authority and stood in front of Eldrinda.
“Eldrinda Benkilte, are you ready today to take the coronation vows?” he asked.
Eldrinda nodded.
''Please speak your answer,'' Kierien said.
“I ... yes I am.”
“Eldrinda Benkilte,'' said Kierien ''Place your right hand upon The Rod of Authority and repeat after me the vows your forefathers have written down.”
Eldrinda recited the simple vows: “As ruler of Erlos I vow never to touch strong drink. I vow never to surrender in battle. As ruler of Erlos I vow before the elders of Erlos and before the Great Spirit Eloih to rule justly according to the laws of Erlos.”
Kierien turned to the Council of Elders: “Have you witnessed that these vows have been made in the proper order and are valid?”
“We have.”
Next Kierien poured a little of the oil from the flask onto Eldrinda’s head: “Stand up, Eldrinda Hrothl. May the Great Spirit Eloih bless you and help you keep the vows that you have made today, which were witnessed by at least three people.”
Eldrinda rose and Kierien handed him the Rod of Authority: “You seem uncertain, my friend?”
“I am,” Eldrinda replied. “My father set such high standards which I cannot hope to attain.”
“But you can try,” said Kierien.
+++++++++++
After the emergency ceremony Eldrinda Benkilte stood with his sister Auldrius on the balcony of her apartment overlooking the gardens of Astra City. Her small hands gripped the smooth metal railing of the balcony. The night was warm. Flying vehicles flitted like brightly coloured insects between immense towers and graceful curving walkways. At this time, Erlos had been at war with Bueloess for 600 years.
The inner levels of Astra city, where gravity was weakest, were reserved for the great vortexian engines and the machinery controlling weather, and for the low-gravity workshops and factories.
Shelron had been a wise and respected Hrothl, though a unyielding one at times. Eldrinda was regarded as something of a dreamer and never short of ideas, although getting them past Erlos’ Council of Seven was something else entirely.
But Auldrius was worried. She knew there were two Eldrindas; there was the likable, unpretentious Eldrinda, always polite and courteous, who easily made friends with everyone – and then there was the distant Eldrinda who withdrew into himself for days at a time, and could enter a room so deep in thought that he would seem would look right through a person greeting him, as if there was nobody there. Lately the second Eldrinda seemed to be taking over. Her brother's mind was far away from the important job in hand.
The fact of their father’s death and its immediate consequences seemed to be just a bit of nuisance to him at the moment – coming as it did on the same day as his first positive view of the ‘blue world’ that had been obsessing him for years. The distant blue world seemed to be claiming a lot more of his attention than the world in which he actually lived at the moment. But there are countless of worlds out there, she thought. Why should he be so concerned with just one world, so far away?
She watched his face as he stood gazing out into the dark trees. 'What is he thinking?' she asked herself.
In fact Eldrinda was trying move the hurried events of the last few hours into a back shelf box in his mind, trying to free his brain to concentrate on the equations whirling around inside it: 'The time dichotomy just doesn't make sense,' he was thinking. 'The equations run to infinity. The light seems to be reversed. It's coming back on itself.'
“Do you have any immediate plans?” She asked him.
At first she thought he was going to ignore her and was just about to repeat the question when he lifted troubled grey eyes to meet hers, as if it was an effort: “Just to end this war,” he said.
Her eyes widened in mock surprise: “Immediately?”
He looked away and stared into the trees. For a moment she thought he had taken offence. But it was not his nature to concern himself with personal ego trivialities. He shrugged.
“You know my ideas,” he said.
The idea of taking the attack to the enemy instead of fighting a purely defensive war had strong support in their own city, Astra City, but even their late father had not been able to steer it through Erlos’ Council of Seven.
“It’s just so terribly risky,” she said.
“Worse to delay what must be done eventually.”
“Probably,” she agreed.
“So many dead,” Eldrinda said, “Now him.”
'It seems to be located in a sort of loop, or fold, in the time/space matrix,' he was thinking. 'Like walking through a mirror and finding another mirror reflecting back on the other side.'
He realized she was crying again. He put an arm around her shoulders: “He wouldn’t want tears.”
“I know.” She blew her nose on a tissue.
They went inside together and ate a simple meal in near silence. Afterwards she hugged him, “Try to get some sleep now. Your blue world will still be there tomorrow.”
He nodded.
She kissed his cheek, “Just be careful.”
(end of Chapter Four)
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Book One: Two Worlds
Part Two: Eldrinda of Erlos
Chapter Five
After supper with Auldrius, Eldrinda wanted to walk rather than use the particle transceiver, negotiating his way through the long passages of the palace to his own plainly furnished apartment. He let himself in and lay back on the bed with his hands behind his head. His mind was still busy with the blue planet trying to solve the time dichotomy. It was like a knot in his brain, and as he lay there trying to unravel it, he just made the knot tighter.
After a while, lying there with closed eyes, he realized the room had become cold. He opened his eyes and tried to reach to adjust the thermostat on the bedside table, but found he could not move his arm. Then in the dim light it took him a few seconds to see that a pale figure was standing beside the bed, holding up a splendid toy for him to see. It was a shining miniature replica of the blue world.
With a shock of apprehension, Eldrinda recognized the intruder: it was Ildis Ameira, of Spectra City. He hadn’t seen him for more than twenty years. Eldrinda tried to get up but found he could not move at all. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, as if in a dream.
Mesmerized like a rabbit by a cobra, Eldrinda lay there paralyzed as Ildris' thin hands lifted the miniature planet, as if to throw it down into Eldrinda's face.
Although he could not move or speak, Eldrinda’s mind remained quite clear as he recalled the circumstances of his last encounter with Ildris, whose father, Elront Ameira, had once been the proud and ambitious ruler of Erlos’ great Spectra City.
But Elront Ameira had never been satisfied with his own powerful position and had devised a scheme to become H’rothl of all Erlos. This he had planned to accomplish by bringing to an end the 600 year war after negotiating peace with Erlos’ ancient enemy -- which Erlotians named Bueloess. Of course it was only a matter of time before word of Elront Ameira’s scheme reached Shelron H'rothl, who flew into a rage, regarding Elront’s plan as nothing but a proposal for surrender and so Shelron had stormed off to confront Elront, with Eldrinda almost running trying to keep up with him, trying to calm him down.
But the more Eldrinda had tried to reason with his father to stop and think calmly before doing something he might later regret, the greater Shelron’s fury had become as he strode along, raging on about plots and treason.
Elront, when Shelron found him, was walking along a corridor in quiet conversation with his own son, Ildris Ameira. Shelron, incandescent with rage, had rushed up to Elront and, taking him by the collar with both hands, began shaking him and shouting in his face and banging him against the wall, while Eldrinda tried to pull him off. Shelron was stocky and physically powerful, and Elront, like his son Ildris, was thin and weak and no match.
Eventually in genuine fear for his own safety, Elront drew a gun and desperately tried to push Shelron away by pushing the muzzle into Shelron’s stomach.
Shelron’s reaction to this threat was to shake and manhandle Elront even worse. Eldrinda, seeing the danger, still struggled to pull his father off. By now Elront was becoming so disorientated from the blows to his head, and so desperate to free himself from the punishment he was taking at Shelron’s hands that Eldrinda watched with horror as Elront’s finger began to whiten upon the trigger of the weapon.
It was at this point that Eldrinda, without thinking about it, stepped back and drawing his own weapon, shot Elront Ameira dead.
All the time Ildris, had just stood there, frozen with fear.
The manner in which Elront met his death had haunted Eldrinda’s every waking moment since that day. He would give anything to turn back the clock, and replay that split second.
Now, as he lay there paralyzed while Ildris stood over him poised to smash the heavy sphere down onto his face, Eldrinda’s mind was back twenty years in that corridor: the hot vomit burning in his throat and the cold weight of the gun in his hand, listening to the obscene gargling noises that Elront was making as he choked to death on his own blood.
Ildris was backed up against the wall, trying not to stand in his father’s blood – standing there frozen – hands down, palms flat against the wall behind him, his eyes like pale glass staring at Eldrinda with a confused expression of terrible pain, listening to the horrible death rattle that his father was making
Eldrinda was trying to say ‘sorry’ but was bent double with a fit of vomiting before he could get the words out, while Ildris in slow motion, shook his head once, then turned and ran along the corridor.
And for Eldrinda there began a lifelong purgatory of blood-guilt: the demon of death that lodged like an evil in his soul, destroying his peace of mind, every day of his life, and the knowledge always showing in his eyes.
Now twenty years later, Ildris had come to claim his revenge. But suddenly, instead of hurling the planet down upon Eldrinda’s head, he appeared to change his mind and smiling, lowered his hands, clutching the beautiful toy to his chest.
Eldrinda was now again trying to say the word ‘sorry’ and again unable to get the words out when Ildris smiled again in the same mocking way and left as mysteriously as he had come in.
At once the room had returned to its natural warmth and Eldrinda was able to move again.
The whole thing had lasted not even a minute.
He didn’t know whether or not he’d just dreamed it all.
++++++++
Shortly afterwards the first formal meeting of The Seven Cities Council of Erlos was due to begin and the seven rulers were gathering around their respective thrones with all their captains and attendants, wearing full regalia for the occasion of Eldrinda Benkilte’s first appearance as the new Hrothl of Erlos.
Sol Garth of Diana City was seated upon a throne of silver, wearing the black and silver colours of Diana City, beneath Diana’s crest of a naked woman holding a sword in one hand and in the other a sprig of leaves, beneath a crescent moon. He was an intense individual of few words,
Justin Leobin, was seated upon the wooden throne of Victoria City, wearing the green colours of Victoria. Leobin's bearing was quiet and still as his quiet gaze moved slowly around the room. Victoria’s City’s crest was a balance, a scale.
The golden throne of Spectra City was still unoccupied. Spectra City’s seven captains wore gold as, beneath the crest of entwined serpents, they waited for Mycyl their leader to arrive.
Old Kierien, wearing the purple robes was seated upon the amethyst throne of Centura City beneath Centura's crest of a bride with a lit lamp in her hand.
Eleni of B'rahma City now swept in to take up her throne with her voluminous white robes billowing around her ample form like a ship under full sail. She was in conversation with the dark, beautiful Thalia of B'retza City and with Mycyl Mietra of Spectra City.
Mycyl as usual was talking in an animated way, his attention shifting back and forth from one woman’s face to the other. They all took their thrones in preparation for Eldrinda’s entrance.
Eleni took her time settling herself upon the diamond throne of B’rahma City, arranging her white robes around herself, whilst her 10 captains, also wearing white, took their places beneath B’rahma's crest of a king on a throne, holding in one hand a shepherd’s crook and in his other hand the shining disc of the sun.
Lovely Thalia wore red upon the ruby throne of B’retza City, her crest: a warrior queen in full armour, standing in a chariot. Thalia had no time for emotional arguments when they disguised truth. A battle against Thalia would not be won without scars.
Now Eldrinda Hrothl entered to take up the topaz throne of Astra City beneath the rising firebird crest. He wore the royal blue of Solastra State. Astra City, with its population of 4046 million souls, was by far the largest Erlotian city and carried the largest weight of votes on Erlos’ Council of Seven.
++++++++++++
“Eldrinda, do try not to look so uncomfortable,” said Eleni of B’rahma, smiling.
Eldrinda's face was grim. He shook his head, as if to clear it. “ I’m fine,” he said.
“No, you are not,” said Eleni, now with genuine concern. “What is it?”
This isn’t starting too well, he thought. I can't tell them I'm so badly shaken-up by the dream I had last night. If it was a dream. He shook his head: "It's nothing."
“Very well,” said Thalia of B’retza City: “And now – what are your plans?”
“For the war, you mean?”
“Let’s start there,” she said.
Eldrinda swallowed: “You all know where I stand, but for the purpose of this council, I will today repeat and clarify my stance as new Hrothl of Erlos. For 600 years now we have been defending ourselves while Bueloess just gets stronger. We lose more Erlotian lives every day. My own father has just lost his life.
“Just one more Erlotian life lost – wasted -- trying to cut off the arms of a beast that grows two more for every one we sever. Traveling at below light-speed through normal space, Bueloess’ main force has taken millions of years to reach our own arc of space and is now approaching our own solar vortex, in its greed across the galaxy for the metal lithos that it so badly needs, while we simply engage in defense, and try to prevent Bueloess’ scout forces from establishing a permanent base upon the planet Marion, our closest neighbour.
“But we all know that our Erlotian cities have been designed for the capability of traveling along inner dimensional roadways, effectively by-passing light-speed, and so we know that we can in theory surprise and destroy Bueloess’ home planet in just a fraction of the time it’s taken Bueloess to reach us.
“It’s risky. Up to now we’ve been able to detect and dodge Bueloess' long range missiles fired from deep space. But Bueloess’ force around Marion is building fast, studying our defenses and forcing us to engage ever more deadly skirmishes against scout forces probing daily with more advanced technology to open gaps in our shields, and with ever more powerful weapons to exploit them.
“And every day it just gets worse. Bueloess’ main force draws closer, until soon Erlos will no longer be having to defend itself against heavy missiles fired long-range from deep space, that we have so far always managed to dodge, but fired instead directly from the surface of Marion.
“Erlos can delay no longer. Now while we still can, before one of those missiles takes out a whole city, you must all vote with Astra City to take the war to Bueloess’ home world.”
There was silence. They waited for him to continue. But he had no more. Mycyl of Spectra was, as usual, quick to have his say: “Spectra City has long supported Astra City’s view," he said. "But Spectra carries only four votes." He turned towards Justin Leobin of Victoria City: “Will Victoria not join us?"
Leobin raised his chin slightly, his quiet eyes moving from one face to another, slowly around the silent hall. A clock ticked somewhere. They waited.
“A large scale attack by Erlos through the innerspace will leave the planet Aelutia with dangerously reduced defenses,” Leobin said finally: “However Victoria City agrees to add its five votes and to start preparing her people.”
Mycyl addressed himself next toward Kierien of Centura City: “And you, Centura?”
Kierien nodded. “Centura City will add its eight votes in support of Astra City’s proposal.”
Mycyl turned next to Eleni. "Will B'rahma vote too?"
“B’rahma will add her ten votes,” she said. “But on condition that B'rahma City itself never be required to take part in the mission of destruction.”
Mycyl nodded his satisfaction before raising an eyebrow toward Thalia of B’retza..
“B’retza City withholds its ten votes at this time," was Thalia’s grave response: "The H'rothl Eldrinda's plan may indeed eventually become our last resort. But B'retza City judges that this proposed action will divide our forces, endangering Erlos and weakening our ability to defend the planet Aelutia, and cause our destruction if it fails."
Mycyl rolled his eyes.
"However," Thalia added, "B'retza City will agree to start preparing her population with immediate effect. In the event the situation should change, B'retza will be ready too."
Finally Mycyl turned to Solgarth of Diana City.
“Diana City withholds its three votes,” SolGarth said. “Diana City will not agree to endanger her population in such a dangerous and speculative exercise as that proposed by Astra City.”
It was not the unanimous vote that was required, but it was the best that could be hoped for at the moment.
+++++++++++++
When he returned from what had become a long and complicated debate but one at which he had acquitted himself well, Eldrinda was only mildly surprised to find on a table in his room, in a silver ice bucket, a golden bottle of Aazyrian wine.
Assuming that Sumadji or that his sister Auldrius had sent it to congratulate him on his first debate as Hrothl of Erlos, he poured himself a long-stemmed glass of the fragrant liquid and sniffed it appreciatively before tasting it. He drained the glass quickly, rather insulting the wine’s noble pedigree, and felt immediately the comfortable sense of relaxation that alcohol provides. He refilled the glass and leaned back in his chair
I vow never to touch strong drink.
The thought arrived late. Eldrinda was no stranger to alcohol. He’d celebrated air-seal racing victories with Sumadji in their student days with heroic quantities of much stronger stuff than wine. But he corked the bottle anyway and soon was lost in his impossible equations, sipping now and then from the glass until a wave of exhaustion washed over him. His eyes were blurry and burning from the screen's brightness..
He left the bottle and the empty glass on the table, pushed off his shoes and rolled into bed with his clothes on. His dreams that night were filled with smoke and deaths heads and hammers, with strange, wild beasts and with faces contorted in pain.
++++++++++
Eldrinda woke early with a terrible headache, the communicator alarm jangling loudly beside his bed. His eyes refused to focus. He fumbled around for the answer button. He located it by touch and jabbed it a few times until the jangling stopped.
“Hello?” he rasped hoarsely.
“It’s me,” Sumadji said.
“What?” Eldrinda groaned.
“Bueloetians approaching fast,” Sumadji said.
“I’m on my way,” Eldrinda mumbled.
“They’re close”
Eldrinda’s head was pounding. He swung his legs off the edge of the bed and pushed himself to his feet and wobbled to the bathroom. No time to shower. He splashed his face with water. His eyes -- red and raw -- looked back at him from the mirror. He sat on the bed and pulled his boots on, grunting with the simple effort. A powerful humming filled his brain.
He lurched unsteadily to the door. His head was spinning and his mouth was dry as he sat down in the particle transceiver. Sumadji was waiting for him when he emerged from the transceiver at his fighter station.
“You don’t look too good?”
“I’m fine.”
Sumadji saw a look in his friend’s eyes. He had a feeling something was wrong: “You don’t have to do this, if you're unwell?”
“I’m fine,” Eldrinda insisted.
There was a knot in his stomach and he was swimming against waves of nausea as he pulled on his metallic flying suit. The fighters were scrambling when he reached the din of the port room where above a roar of engines and the loud incessant jangle of alarms, men were shouting to be heard. The noise seemed to be shaking around inside his skull.
He pulled on his helmet and walked quickly across the metal floor to his fighter.
He strapped himself in. The roof of the fighter closed over his head, shutting out the din. His fighter moved forward into the lock. A light inside the lock glowed red in semi darkness. Lights and data displays flickered across the control panel in front of him. The lock closed.
He watched the red light on the outer door of the airlock, with a feeling of tension. The light went green and the outer door opened to the blackness of space. The light went blue. There was a gathering roar and then a whoosh as his fighter was catapulted into the vacuum of space. His engines fired. He felt the accelerators pushing him hard back in his seat.
Sumadji came through on the radio: “Let's get them!”
Side by side, always defending and watching out for one another, Eldrinda and Sumadji streaked into the attack, sighting and firing, and seeing the Bueloetian spotter craft explode. But suddenly Eldrinda felt as if a knife had pierced his brain.
He grabbed the sides of his helmet with his hands in reflex action, leaning forward and groaning in agony as his fighter went out of control. Sumadji was on Eldrinda’s wing. He saw Eldrinda’s craft began to zig-zag around and assumed he’d been hit.
“Are you hit?” he shouted.
“What? Hit? No. I'm not hit,” Eldrinda’s voice came back on the radio. The pain had disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived.
“What's wrong?”
“No. I'm fine, Sumadji …I just …”
“Do you want to go back in to base?”
“No … I’m fine.”
Side by side they streaked back into the fight -- sighting and firing, pulling up and firing again, each defending the other. Eldrinda’s head ached as he worked the controls, thinking of nothing but sighting and firing, watching for the blinding fireflash of the hit then pulling around, checking first Sumadji's slipstream then his own before swooping back and firing again. There were always more Bueloetians. His head seemed to be bursting.
And then suddenly, again, the white-hot agony knifed through Eldrinda’s brain, and again Sumadji watched his friend’s craft begin to zig-zag.
“Eldrinda!”
Sumadji’s desperate voice brought Eldrinda back to reality as again the pain suddenly disappeared. They were already miles away from the fight, Sumadji sticking with his friend.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know -- I just – blacked … out.”
“You’d better get back in now,” Sumadji insisted.
“No. I’m fine.”
“You cannot control your craft! You’ll be hit. As flight commander I am ordering you to return to base -- and I will accompany you to make sure you do!” Sumadji shouted.
+++++++++++
Sumadji helped Eldrinda from the transceiver to his room and made him lie down on the bed. The light seemed to be hurting Eldrinda’s eyes, so Sumadji dimmed the lamps and pulled the curtains.
Auldrius came in: “Eldrinda! What’s wrong?”
He raised himself on an elbow to look at her, with staring eyes.
“I’ve run from battle,” he said.
“Nonsense!” she cried. “You’re unwell.”
While they were waiting together for the doctor, Sumadji picked up the bottle of wine. It was still three-quarters full. He uncorked it and sniffed it.
“Good wine.”
“Thanks for sending it,” Eldrinda said weakly. “But I think it’s a bit off. ”
“I didn’t send it.” Sumadji looked accusingly at Auldrius: “Did you?”
“No!”
“I’m taking this bottle to the lab right now.”
They had an answer within minutes: the wine was infected with the ceisorundra virus of madness.
(end of chapter five)
Part Two: Eldrinda of Erlos
Chapter Five
After supper with Auldrius, Eldrinda wanted to walk rather than use the particle transceiver, negotiating his way through the long passages of the palace to his own plainly furnished apartment. He let himself in and lay back on the bed with his hands behind his head. His mind was still busy with the blue planet trying to solve the time dichotomy. It was like a knot in his brain, and as he lay there trying to unravel it, he just made the knot tighter.
After a while, lying there with closed eyes, he realized the room had become cold. He opened his eyes and tried to reach to adjust the thermostat on the bedside table, but found he could not move his arm. Then in the dim light it took him a few seconds to see that a pale figure was standing beside the bed, holding up a splendid toy for him to see. It was a shining miniature replica of the blue world.
With a shock of apprehension, Eldrinda recognized the intruder: it was Ildis Ameira, of Spectra City. He hadn’t seen him for more than twenty years. Eldrinda tried to get up but found he could not move at all. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, as if in a dream.
Mesmerized like a rabbit by a cobra, Eldrinda lay there paralyzed as Ildris' thin hands lifted the miniature planet, as if to throw it down into Eldrinda's face.
Although he could not move or speak, Eldrinda’s mind remained quite clear as he recalled the circumstances of his last encounter with Ildris, whose father, Elront Ameira, had once been the proud and ambitious ruler of Erlos’ great Spectra City.
But Elront Ameira had never been satisfied with his own powerful position and had devised a scheme to become H’rothl of all Erlos. This he had planned to accomplish by bringing to an end the 600 year war after negotiating peace with Erlos’ ancient enemy -- which Erlotians named Bueloess. Of course it was only a matter of time before word of Elront Ameira’s scheme reached Shelron H'rothl, who flew into a rage, regarding Elront’s plan as nothing but a proposal for surrender and so Shelron had stormed off to confront Elront, with Eldrinda almost running trying to keep up with him, trying to calm him down.
But the more Eldrinda had tried to reason with his father to stop and think calmly before doing something he might later regret, the greater Shelron’s fury had become as he strode along, raging on about plots and treason.
Elront, when Shelron found him, was walking along a corridor in quiet conversation with his own son, Ildris Ameira. Shelron, incandescent with rage, had rushed up to Elront and, taking him by the collar with both hands, began shaking him and shouting in his face and banging him against the wall, while Eldrinda tried to pull him off. Shelron was stocky and physically powerful, and Elront, like his son Ildris, was thin and weak and no match.
Eventually in genuine fear for his own safety, Elront drew a gun and desperately tried to push Shelron away by pushing the muzzle into Shelron’s stomach.
Shelron’s reaction to this threat was to shake and manhandle Elront even worse. Eldrinda, seeing the danger, still struggled to pull his father off. By now Elront was becoming so disorientated from the blows to his head, and so desperate to free himself from the punishment he was taking at Shelron’s hands that Eldrinda watched with horror as Elront’s finger began to whiten upon the trigger of the weapon.
It was at this point that Eldrinda, without thinking about it, stepped back and drawing his own weapon, shot Elront Ameira dead.
All the time Ildris, had just stood there, frozen with fear.
The manner in which Elront met his death had haunted Eldrinda’s every waking moment since that day. He would give anything to turn back the clock, and replay that split second.
Now, as he lay there paralyzed while Ildris stood over him poised to smash the heavy sphere down onto his face, Eldrinda’s mind was back twenty years in that corridor: the hot vomit burning in his throat and the cold weight of the gun in his hand, listening to the obscene gargling noises that Elront was making as he choked to death on his own blood.
Ildris was backed up against the wall, trying not to stand in his father’s blood – standing there frozen – hands down, palms flat against the wall behind him, his eyes like pale glass staring at Eldrinda with a confused expression of terrible pain, listening to the horrible death rattle that his father was making
Eldrinda was trying to say ‘sorry’ but was bent double with a fit of vomiting before he could get the words out, while Ildris in slow motion, shook his head once, then turned and ran along the corridor.
And for Eldrinda there began a lifelong purgatory of blood-guilt: the demon of death that lodged like an evil in his soul, destroying his peace of mind, every day of his life, and the knowledge always showing in his eyes.
Now twenty years later, Ildris had come to claim his revenge. But suddenly, instead of hurling the planet down upon Eldrinda’s head, he appeared to change his mind and smiling, lowered his hands, clutching the beautiful toy to his chest.
Eldrinda was now again trying to say the word ‘sorry’ and again unable to get the words out when Ildris smiled again in the same mocking way and left as mysteriously as he had come in.
At once the room had returned to its natural warmth and Eldrinda was able to move again.
The whole thing had lasted not even a minute.
He didn’t know whether or not he’d just dreamed it all.
++++++++
Shortly afterwards the first formal meeting of The Seven Cities Council of Erlos was due to begin and the seven rulers were gathering around their respective thrones with all their captains and attendants, wearing full regalia for the occasion of Eldrinda Benkilte’s first appearance as the new Hrothl of Erlos.
Sol Garth of Diana City was seated upon a throne of silver, wearing the black and silver colours of Diana City, beneath Diana’s crest of a naked woman holding a sword in one hand and in the other a sprig of leaves, beneath a crescent moon. He was an intense individual of few words,
Justin Leobin, was seated upon the wooden throne of Victoria City, wearing the green colours of Victoria. Leobin's bearing was quiet and still as his quiet gaze moved slowly around the room. Victoria’s City’s crest was a balance, a scale.
The golden throne of Spectra City was still unoccupied. Spectra City’s seven captains wore gold as, beneath the crest of entwined serpents, they waited for Mycyl their leader to arrive.
Old Kierien, wearing the purple robes was seated upon the amethyst throne of Centura City beneath Centura's crest of a bride with a lit lamp in her hand.
Eleni of B'rahma City now swept in to take up her throne with her voluminous white robes billowing around her ample form like a ship under full sail. She was in conversation with the dark, beautiful Thalia of B'retza City and with Mycyl Mietra of Spectra City.
Mycyl as usual was talking in an animated way, his attention shifting back and forth from one woman’s face to the other. They all took their thrones in preparation for Eldrinda’s entrance.
Eleni took her time settling herself upon the diamond throne of B’rahma City, arranging her white robes around herself, whilst her 10 captains, also wearing white, took their places beneath B’rahma's crest of a king on a throne, holding in one hand a shepherd’s crook and in his other hand the shining disc of the sun.
Lovely Thalia wore red upon the ruby throne of B’retza City, her crest: a warrior queen in full armour, standing in a chariot. Thalia had no time for emotional arguments when they disguised truth. A battle against Thalia would not be won without scars.
Now Eldrinda Hrothl entered to take up the topaz throne of Astra City beneath the rising firebird crest. He wore the royal blue of Solastra State. Astra City, with its population of 4046 million souls, was by far the largest Erlotian city and carried the largest weight of votes on Erlos’ Council of Seven.
++++++++++++
“Eldrinda, do try not to look so uncomfortable,” said Eleni of B’rahma, smiling.
Eldrinda's face was grim. He shook his head, as if to clear it. “ I’m fine,” he said.
“No, you are not,” said Eleni, now with genuine concern. “What is it?”
This isn’t starting too well, he thought. I can't tell them I'm so badly shaken-up by the dream I had last night. If it was a dream. He shook his head: "It's nothing."
“Very well,” said Thalia of B’retza City: “And now – what are your plans?”
“For the war, you mean?”
“Let’s start there,” she said.
Eldrinda swallowed: “You all know where I stand, but for the purpose of this council, I will today repeat and clarify my stance as new Hrothl of Erlos. For 600 years now we have been defending ourselves while Bueloess just gets stronger. We lose more Erlotian lives every day. My own father has just lost his life.
“Just one more Erlotian life lost – wasted -- trying to cut off the arms of a beast that grows two more for every one we sever. Traveling at below light-speed through normal space, Bueloess’ main force has taken millions of years to reach our own arc of space and is now approaching our own solar vortex, in its greed across the galaxy for the metal lithos that it so badly needs, while we simply engage in defense, and try to prevent Bueloess’ scout forces from establishing a permanent base upon the planet Marion, our closest neighbour.
“But we all know that our Erlotian cities have been designed for the capability of traveling along inner dimensional roadways, effectively by-passing light-speed, and so we know that we can in theory surprise and destroy Bueloess’ home planet in just a fraction of the time it’s taken Bueloess to reach us.
“It’s risky. Up to now we’ve been able to detect and dodge Bueloess' long range missiles fired from deep space. But Bueloess’ force around Marion is building fast, studying our defenses and forcing us to engage ever more deadly skirmishes against scout forces probing daily with more advanced technology to open gaps in our shields, and with ever more powerful weapons to exploit them.
“And every day it just gets worse. Bueloess’ main force draws closer, until soon Erlos will no longer be having to defend itself against heavy missiles fired long-range from deep space, that we have so far always managed to dodge, but fired instead directly from the surface of Marion.
“Erlos can delay no longer. Now while we still can, before one of those missiles takes out a whole city, you must all vote with Astra City to take the war to Bueloess’ home world.”
There was silence. They waited for him to continue. But he had no more. Mycyl of Spectra was, as usual, quick to have his say: “Spectra City has long supported Astra City’s view," he said. "But Spectra carries only four votes." He turned towards Justin Leobin of Victoria City: “Will Victoria not join us?"
Leobin raised his chin slightly, his quiet eyes moving from one face to another, slowly around the silent hall. A clock ticked somewhere. They waited.
“A large scale attack by Erlos through the innerspace will leave the planet Aelutia with dangerously reduced defenses,” Leobin said finally: “However Victoria City agrees to add its five votes and to start preparing her people.”
Mycyl addressed himself next toward Kierien of Centura City: “And you, Centura?”
Kierien nodded. “Centura City will add its eight votes in support of Astra City’s proposal.”
Mycyl turned next to Eleni. "Will B'rahma vote too?"
“B’rahma will add her ten votes,” she said. “But on condition that B'rahma City itself never be required to take part in the mission of destruction.”
Mycyl nodded his satisfaction before raising an eyebrow toward Thalia of B’retza..
“B’retza City withholds its ten votes at this time," was Thalia’s grave response: "The H'rothl Eldrinda's plan may indeed eventually become our last resort. But B'retza City judges that this proposed action will divide our forces, endangering Erlos and weakening our ability to defend the planet Aelutia, and cause our destruction if it fails."
Mycyl rolled his eyes.
"However," Thalia added, "B'retza City will agree to start preparing her population with immediate effect. In the event the situation should change, B'retza will be ready too."
Finally Mycyl turned to Solgarth of Diana City.
“Diana City withholds its three votes,” SolGarth said. “Diana City will not agree to endanger her population in such a dangerous and speculative exercise as that proposed by Astra City.”
It was not the unanimous vote that was required, but it was the best that could be hoped for at the moment.
+++++++++++++
When he returned from what had become a long and complicated debate but one at which he had acquitted himself well, Eldrinda was only mildly surprised to find on a table in his room, in a silver ice bucket, a golden bottle of Aazyrian wine.
Assuming that Sumadji or that his sister Auldrius had sent it to congratulate him on his first debate as Hrothl of Erlos, he poured himself a long-stemmed glass of the fragrant liquid and sniffed it appreciatively before tasting it. He drained the glass quickly, rather insulting the wine’s noble pedigree, and felt immediately the comfortable sense of relaxation that alcohol provides. He refilled the glass and leaned back in his chair
I vow never to touch strong drink.
The thought arrived late. Eldrinda was no stranger to alcohol. He’d celebrated air-seal racing victories with Sumadji in their student days with heroic quantities of much stronger stuff than wine. But he corked the bottle anyway and soon was lost in his impossible equations, sipping now and then from the glass until a wave of exhaustion washed over him. His eyes were blurry and burning from the screen's brightness..
He left the bottle and the empty glass on the table, pushed off his shoes and rolled into bed with his clothes on. His dreams that night were filled with smoke and deaths heads and hammers, with strange, wild beasts and with faces contorted in pain.
++++++++++
Eldrinda woke early with a terrible headache, the communicator alarm jangling loudly beside his bed. His eyes refused to focus. He fumbled around for the answer button. He located it by touch and jabbed it a few times until the jangling stopped.
“Hello?” he rasped hoarsely.
“It’s me,” Sumadji said.
“What?” Eldrinda groaned.
“Bueloetians approaching fast,” Sumadji said.
“I’m on my way,” Eldrinda mumbled.
“They’re close”
Eldrinda’s head was pounding. He swung his legs off the edge of the bed and pushed himself to his feet and wobbled to the bathroom. No time to shower. He splashed his face with water. His eyes -- red and raw -- looked back at him from the mirror. He sat on the bed and pulled his boots on, grunting with the simple effort. A powerful humming filled his brain.
He lurched unsteadily to the door. His head was spinning and his mouth was dry as he sat down in the particle transceiver. Sumadji was waiting for him when he emerged from the transceiver at his fighter station.
“You don’t look too good?”
“I’m fine.”
Sumadji saw a look in his friend’s eyes. He had a feeling something was wrong: “You don’t have to do this, if you're unwell?”
“I’m fine,” Eldrinda insisted.
There was a knot in his stomach and he was swimming against waves of nausea as he pulled on his metallic flying suit. The fighters were scrambling when he reached the din of the port room where above a roar of engines and the loud incessant jangle of alarms, men were shouting to be heard. The noise seemed to be shaking around inside his skull.
He pulled on his helmet and walked quickly across the metal floor to his fighter.
He strapped himself in. The roof of the fighter closed over his head, shutting out the din. His fighter moved forward into the lock. A light inside the lock glowed red in semi darkness. Lights and data displays flickered across the control panel in front of him. The lock closed.
He watched the red light on the outer door of the airlock, with a feeling of tension. The light went green and the outer door opened to the blackness of space. The light went blue. There was a gathering roar and then a whoosh as his fighter was catapulted into the vacuum of space. His engines fired. He felt the accelerators pushing him hard back in his seat.
Sumadji came through on the radio: “Let's get them!”
Side by side, always defending and watching out for one another, Eldrinda and Sumadji streaked into the attack, sighting and firing, and seeing the Bueloetian spotter craft explode. But suddenly Eldrinda felt as if a knife had pierced his brain.
He grabbed the sides of his helmet with his hands in reflex action, leaning forward and groaning in agony as his fighter went out of control. Sumadji was on Eldrinda’s wing. He saw Eldrinda’s craft began to zig-zag around and assumed he’d been hit.
“Are you hit?” he shouted.
“What? Hit? No. I'm not hit,” Eldrinda’s voice came back on the radio. The pain had disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived.
“What's wrong?”
“No. I'm fine, Sumadji …I just …”
“Do you want to go back in to base?”
“No … I’m fine.”
Side by side they streaked back into the fight -- sighting and firing, pulling up and firing again, each defending the other. Eldrinda’s head ached as he worked the controls, thinking of nothing but sighting and firing, watching for the blinding fireflash of the hit then pulling around, checking first Sumadji's slipstream then his own before swooping back and firing again. There were always more Bueloetians. His head seemed to be bursting.
And then suddenly, again, the white-hot agony knifed through Eldrinda’s brain, and again Sumadji watched his friend’s craft begin to zig-zag.
“Eldrinda!”
Sumadji’s desperate voice brought Eldrinda back to reality as again the pain suddenly disappeared. They were already miles away from the fight, Sumadji sticking with his friend.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know -- I just – blacked … out.”
“You’d better get back in now,” Sumadji insisted.
“No. I’m fine.”
“You cannot control your craft! You’ll be hit. As flight commander I am ordering you to return to base -- and I will accompany you to make sure you do!” Sumadji shouted.
+++++++++++
Sumadji helped Eldrinda from the transceiver to his room and made him lie down on the bed. The light seemed to be hurting Eldrinda’s eyes, so Sumadji dimmed the lamps and pulled the curtains.
Auldrius came in: “Eldrinda! What’s wrong?”
He raised himself on an elbow to look at her, with staring eyes.
“I’ve run from battle,” he said.
“Nonsense!” she cried. “You’re unwell.”
While they were waiting together for the doctor, Sumadji picked up the bottle of wine. It was still three-quarters full. He uncorked it and sniffed it.
“Good wine.”
“Thanks for sending it,” Eldrinda said weakly. “But I think it’s a bit off. ”
“I didn’t send it.” Sumadji looked accusingly at Auldrius: “Did you?”
“No!”
“I’m taking this bottle to the lab right now.”
They had an answer within minutes: the wine was infected with the ceisorundra virus of madness.
(end of chapter five)
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Book One: Two Worlds
Part Two: Eldrinda of Erlos
Chapter Six
As Sorac rode down in gathering darkness through the tall pine trees toward the village by the lake, a party of men came up to meet him, and one of them stepped forward.
The man, who appeared to be their village leader, was short of stature with a bald and oddly and lumpy looking skull. He wore sandals and a belted robe and his arms hung easily at his sides while his intelligent grey eyes studied Sorac's appearance carefully for a few moments before he said: “What is your business here?”
“I seek the forest people of Kaarth,” was the shepherd's reply.
"Why?"
"I will explain to them," Sorac said.
“Why the bandages? What happened to your face?”
“I was attacked by mira in the lubyar jungle.”
“Few survive the mira,” said the short man.
“My story is a long one,” Sorac replied.
“Then you had better start talking.”
A wind came from the mountains and the brushed through the tall conifers with a long whispering sigh. Sorac was tired. He was in no mood or condition to begin at the beginning of what had brought him to this place.
"I request to pay you for food and stabling for tonight?" he said at last. "If I may sleep in the stables with Liere, tomorrow I’ll be early gone.”
The other studied him closely: “It is a fine horse you have there, my friend. Where did you get him?”
“Liere was a gift,” said Sorac.
The headman shook his head in disbelief: “How will you pay us, ragged stranger?”
“I have money.”
The headman spat on the ground: “A dead man has no use for money or for a fine horse either.”
Sorac's reaction was to string an arrow to his bow aimed at the man's throat – he would be first to die. To this the other reacted with a ghost of a smile: "We won't rob you, stranger. But you must talk now or ride away. How did you find us?”
"The wise man Kierien sent me."
"So you know Kierien?" The other lifted his chin in surprise: “Describe him then.”
"It was dark and he wore a hood and so I could not clearly see his face," Sorac answered: "But he was old and his eyes were of a violet colour.”
The brooding eyes regarded him thoughtfully: “Just who are you, young stranger?”
“I am Sorac of Aazyr.”
Suddenly the headman’s demeanor relaxed: “You are no ordinary brigand, that is clear. I will hear your tale, Sorac of Aazyr, in return for food and a bed and stabling for the night.”
He gestured with his chin at the arrow that was still pointed at his throat: ''Oh, put that down. You're tired and it's making me nervous.''
Sorac’s intuition told him to trust this man. He looked into his eyes for a few seconds longer, then he released the tension on the bowstring and dismounted. The headman, motioned to one of the other men to take Liere, but Sorac held on to the reins.
“Relax. You’ve found us,” said the headman. "I am Eldrinda."
“Still I would prefer to attend to him myself.”
“Your horse will be well cared for.”
Sorac hesitated for a moment, and then let go the reins. Liere’s ears flickered and he snorted. Sorac patted his neck reassuringly and whispered something in his ear before unbuckling his saddlebags and watching Liere let himself be led away.
A wave of weariness washed over him that made him stagger as he hefted the saddlebags onto his shoulders. It was like the exhaustion that comes after supporting a heavy weight alone for a long time, when one is at last able to release it. The headman, Eldrinda, motioned to one of the men to help him with the bags but Sorac shook his head forcefully. The other shrugged: “Come.”
He led the shepherd up to a wooden house on the lakeshore where, in the gathering dusk, a fair woman wearing a yellow dress met them on the verandah steps. "This is Tyl, my daughter," Eldrinda introduced them: "This is Sorac of Aazyr, and he is hungry."
“What happened to his face?” she gasped.
“Mira," was all Eldrinda needed to say.
“But the mira are riddled with infection!” she said.
She took Sorac’s arm: “Those wounds must be attended to at once.”
She led him up the wooden porch steps into the house where a pinewood fire blazed in a big stone fireplace. There was a long yellowood table in the middle of the room. At the other end of the room a big window opened onto the gently sloshing waters of the dark lake outside. She pulled out a chair and made him sit down at the table while she heated water in a bowl and then began carefully to soak the blood encrusted bandages from his face, her green eyes looking into his.
Above the fireplace, a fabric print in glowing colours decorated the simple wooden room. Mugs and plates were stacked on a single large piece of rough, unvarnished furniture with cupboards and drawers and shelves. There was a fresh vase of yellow mountain flowers. The shelves carried a few books and an untidy clutter of tools and weights and corks and other fishing oddments.
When all the bandages were off and she had cleaned away all the encrusted blood, she pursed her lips and stood back. “It’s already well healed,” she said, surprised. “You must have a miraculous constitution.”
Sorac felt his face with his hand. He realized it was not just his own constitution but the wise man's ointment in the saddlebags that had healed his wounds so miraculously. However one scabbed scar, which cut across his right cheek from ear to mouth, would remain with him forever as a reminder of his grim journey into Aazyr’s lubyar jungles.
She smiled. ”It’s a rugged scar. It will make you still more handsome.”
The headman had pulled up a chair and was looking over his guest without speaking, trying to learn more about him from his appearance and clothing. The sky was now dark and the air getting colder. He got up and closed the window, then sat down again.
Whoever he was, this Sorac of Aazyr was obviously not one to suffer fools gladly, he thought. There was beneath his genuine humility a hard resolve. His riding clothes were travel worn, but he was obviously was not quite comfortable inside them. He seemed to be a fellow well content in his own company – in fact that seemed to be a main feature of his personality.
Tyl shook back her long fair hair and excused herself to go to the kitchen to prepare supper, leaving the two men alone. Eldrinda went over to the cupboard and brought out a stoneware flask of amra brandy.
“You look like you could use some?”
“I’d like to check on Liere first?”
"He's in good hands."
Sorac gave in: “Forgive my rudeness. Thank you.”
Eldrinda poured a dash of the aromatic yellow liquid into a mug and pushed it across the table to the Aazyrian shepherd. “Won’t you have any?” Sorac asked him.
“No thank you. I just keep it for my guests,” Eldrinda said. “But don’t worry about me, I’m quite content. And you don't have to worry about Liere, though your concern is natural. You are safe among friends now, young stranger. And now, though you are weary, we beg your tale. Tyl can hear us from the kitchen.”
Sorac relaxed back in the plain wooden chair. At last he felt safe. The fragrant liquor warmed him on the inside. Outside in darkness, the wind picked quiet chords from the patient pines. A wolf howled somewhere on the rim of the forest. Others took up the reply.
The softly spoken shepherd began to talk.
The words came more easily as the story unfolded. Tyl came in to lay the table with grass mats. She put down a fresh loaf of bread on a board in the middle of the table.
“Supper is nearly ready, but you may start with that,” she said.
A tantalizing aroma wafted from the kitchen. The shepherd tore off a warm chunk of bread and started chewing hungrily. Eldrinda refilled Sorac's mug and nodded for him to go on.
Between mouthfuls, Sorac recalled leaving his home before dawn and told them how he had met the disciple on the road, with gifts and advice from the wise man Kierien, and how she had appeared to him later in his dream, to protect him from the mira.
“Ah yes, the lyn,” Eldrinda said. “We try to keep the knowledge to ourselves and let the mira protect us from the Ukonaai.”
"Do you mind?" He reached for Sorac's handmade bow, turning it in his hands: “You’ve made this well.”
He examined the neatly fletched arrows with their well-balanced tips as Sorac told him about his encounter with the wolf in the pine forest, and of the sense of evil he had felt from the creature. This seemed to give Eldrinda cause for thought, but he said nothing, allowing Sorac to go on with his tale, until Sorac showed him the Urinda stone.
“It is a powerful thing,” he said. “Wear it always.”
Tyl came in with a steaming pot. They ate without talking much. In spite of his earlier feelings of starvation Sorac now found that he had trouble finishing even one bowl of the stew; his fasting over the last few days seemed to have made his stomach shrink.
Afterward Eldrinda said, “There is much you should know, and it is well you came here. But explanations must wait until tomorrow, for you are too weary. I hope you will be comfortable by the fire tonight.”
He threw him a blanket and Sorac lay back in safety while the fire flickered on the hearth with the scent of pine. He was grateful for the wooden walls keeping out the wind that sighed and whispered among the swaying, creaking conifers outside. Nevertheless, his senses warned him of danger unseen, but soon he was asleep.
+++ +
Ildries Ameira hovered in the astral dimension, as he watched the shepherd go to sleep. He had already gained a great respect for Dumarion Ben’s son. A gentle soul the shepherd might be, but his reactions were swift and deadly.
Ildries had suffered an almost fatal shock from the death of the wolf by Sorac's arrow, that day in the forest. Like a powerful wave, the psychic disruption had tumbled and almost drowned him, before washing him up in a place he did not know. It had taken him a long time to find his way back to his physical body, during which time it had nearly died, being reft of its etheric counterpart.
It had taken more days for both his body and mind to recover. It still terrified him to think about it. And now this interfering shepherd was already talking to the Eldrinda, a man in whom Ildries had more than a passing interest – for it was Ildries who had left the wine infected with cesirondra in Eldrinda's apartment.
He sensed all his plans going awry. The power he had felt between Eldrinda and Sorac was very strong. It filled him with hatred for the troublesome shepherd. But someone who carried the Urinda stone, was not one to be trifled with. Ildries lived his life like a man trying to move water with a sieve.
But there was nothing more to be accomplished there tonight. He could do nothing from the astral but observe.
++++++++++++++
Ildries had been born into the ruling Ameira family on Spectra City where he had been instilled with a powerful knowledge of natural forces and how to manipulate them. And now Ildries was an example of what could happen when a Spectran adept ‘went wrong’ by employing Spectran 'casting' skills for selfish ends.
Until the death of his father at the hand of Eldrinda Benkilte, Ildries had worked unselfishly for Erlos. But since the day of his father Elront's bloody death, everything had changed. Now a fire consumed Ildries from within.
After his father’s death, the idea had solidified in Ildries' mind that Elront's killing had been planned and sanctioned at the highest level by Shelron H’rothl. To Ildries Ameira it was plain that Erlos, at Shelron's persuasion, had murdered his father.
Although like many sons, he had disagreed with many of his father’s ideas, he had never doubted his father's sincerity. He knew that whatever his father’s faults and quirks might have been, he had always acted in accordance with what he believed was in the best interests of Erlos.
In quietly and privately extending his own peace overtures towards Bueloess -- in brave and lonely defiance of stonewalling opposition from Shelron H’rothl -- Elront Ameira had walked a lonely road. A road, which turned out to be fatal.
Ildries had often tried to talk his father out of pursuing his talks with Bueloess, but neither he nor his father would ever have believed that Erlos’ leading Benkilte family would go so far as to engineer a situation in which he would be shot dead.
As if it were yesterday he never forgot the horror of that bloody corridor with Shelron shaking his father by the throat until Elront could no longer breathe and was forced in desperation to reach for his gun.
Since that day, Ildries had turned his back on the Erlos. From then on he was unable to believe in any ‘goodness’ or in any ‘right and wrong’. He would never trust anyone again nor would he show any interest in anyone’s opinions or welfare. From then on he would walk a lonely path feeling only scorn for all other human beings.
He knew it would take time, especially as he was on his own. He would need to find an ally. And unlike his father, Ildries decided it was useless to try to negotiate with Bueloess. Bueloess wanted only the metal lithos. And at any cost. The lithos was upon Aelutia. Erlos defended Aelutia. So Erlos had to be destroyed. There was no room in Bueloess' strategy for any shades of meaning that did not wrap up these ends. Bueloess was not interested in negotiations. Bueloess would accept nothing but Erlos’ complete and unconditional destruction.
Bueloess’ strategy was to set-up a base upon the planet Marion, Erlos’ closest neighbour, but Bueloess could not succeed in doing so until its own forces were stronger. While Erlos continued to defend itself, Bueloess was waiting for its main forces to reach the vortex of Sanfit, the Erlotian sun, after their long journey through deep space. Bueloess had not been able to hurry the arrival of these main forces, nor Erlos able to prevent it. The arrival was now imminent.
When a person becomes obsessed with an idea or belief, logic begins to fail.
Ildries knew he had to think well before doing anything rash. Shelron H’rothl, while he had lived, had been a force that Ildries had not been willing to confront directly. He decided on a different strategy.
But with Shelron’s death the thought of Eldrinda Benkilte as H’rothl of Erlos had been just too much for him to live with. Ildries knew he couldn’t kill Eldrinda. That was out of the question. To do so would have led to a hunt by Erlos that would inevitably have ended with his arrest.
And so he had arrived at the idea of infecting a bottle of wine with the ceisorundra virus and leaving it in Eldrinda Benkilte’s room for him to find. Ildries considered it an elegant personal revenge, pending his main scheme for complete ruin of Erlos.
After seeing what had happened to his father, Ildries understood that it would have been extremely unwise for him to have tried to carry out any plans for revenge from within Erlos. He had subsequently gone into exile on the Aelutian surface, and now lived on the continent of Aazyr. Of course this didn’t stop him from secretly visiting Erlos, from time to time.
In deciding to live on Aelutia, he had been influenced by the fact that Erlos’ highest laws forbade any form of physical interference on the surface of the planet. The penalty imposed on an Erlotian should he or she break this law was 'earthdeath' – banishment to the surface of Aelutia.
He was a high Spectran adept. He knew that in the earliest days of human existence upon Aelutia – long before Erlos came into being – the human experience of the supernal realm had been much more direct.
Angels and demons, elves and earth-spirits had once been a every-day part of human life – as real to humans as were their relationships with one another and with the animals and other creatures with whom they shared their world and their reality.
+++++
Over thousands of years the true events might never be known that gave rise to ancient myths and legends passed down through generations. But old Kierien of Centura City was quite right when he gave advice to Sorac that, like the shell of a nut, the ancient legend of a doomed civilization, and of the powerful weapon of Aba Mainyus, was a story that did indeed preserve some truth within.
The weapon of Aba Mainyus was a real and powerful thing: a force submerged but not destroyed.
Imagine if the huge and wonderful civilization of Erlos with its great space cities and powers were by some catastrophe to vanish without trace – surely the memory of Erlos and cities in the sky would live on in the memory Aelutians for ages to come and with re-telling become myth and legend. And who is to say that such a catastrophe could never happen? More than one powerful civilization has utterly vanished over time.
Although it strained Ildries’ Spectran powers to the limit – it had not been beyond him to locate and retrieve the powerful weapon of Aba Mainyus and then ‘cast’ it into the form of a beautiful sword.
He knew the energy of this weapon could be effective only within the ‘earth surround’ of the planet Aelutia. It could not be used directly against the higher energies of Erlos, and so his next step had been to seek out a petty Ukonaai chieftain of not too much intelligence to whom he could present the sword as a gift, knowing that the weapon would soon transform the recipient into the most powerful warlord Aazyr had ever known.
Ildries had never intended keeping the weapon for himself. He was a thin, physically weak man. He was definitely not the type to inspire confidence as the sword-wielding warrior leader of an army of Ukonaai. Moreover, he wanted to keep out of sight until the time came to reveal himself. Anyway the idea of physical combat reduced him to a jelly of pure fear. He needed someone else to do the killing and had chosen Mykros for his stooge.
By taking this step – by interfering physically upon the surface of the planet – Ildries had condemned himself to 'earthdeath'. It didn’t bother him. He had already left Erlos.
He knew the 'kharmic' law against sorcery – the logic implicit in the nature of the powers at the disposal of a Spectran adept -- that such developed powers may never be employed for any selfish or destructive purpose. An adept who crossed the line was a sorcerer, and sorcery is a dangerous business. Angels and demons are not lightly commanded by mortal beings. An adept who is not strong and pure-minded can find things going badly wrong. So it is said that whom the gods destroy, they first make mad.
Although the angelic and demonic natural powers may for a while be forced to do the adept's bidding, by the adept’s studied knowledge and command of the laws governing the dimensions of their own existence, these powers will always be able to outlast the ability of any mortal to direct them.
Once a human has lost the support of the angelic forces by abusing his power over them – once the angelic forces have deserted him – then the demonic 'klippoth' forces will be free to 'turn around and rend him' like dogs against a hated master. They will delight in exacting cruel revenge upon him for ever believing that he, a mere mortal, could ever truly control them.
First, they will rejoice in destroying his reason. They will force him to lacerate and torture his own body. They will cause him to destroy everything he cares most about, and to wreak havoc on those he most loves. They will possess him and through his physical senses abandon themselves to gluttony and lust and every other debased and deadly sin available to their enjoyment in the physical dimension.
After many years of this -- when they begin to tire of such earthbound games in the physical world -- they will force him to take his own life in some horrible way, and then will drag his broken spirit down to their own dimension.
It is a horrifying prospect but Ildries didn’t care. His obsession was too strong. He’d deal with the consequences when they arrived. Indeed Ildries Ameira was starting to think of himself as the' H'zaan -- the chosen one' and to believe that he alone perceived the crack between worlds --that he alone knew how to bridge the valley between light and darkness.
Like anyone else he needed to be able to justify himself to himself. But he had other problems, and at the time the biggest of these was the Emperor Mykros of the Ukonaai. Ildries’ original plan had been for Mykros first to break the heart and spirit of Erlos by invading and looting the garden kingdom, and then for Mykros to allow Bueloess to set-up missile bases on Aazyr – in which case Erlos would have no choice but surrender or face annihilation.
But like all Ildries’ other schemes, this one had been slapped together as the ideas arose. He’d never really thought it through. It was true that Erlos’ high law would indeed prevent Erlos from blasting Buelotian missile bases on the surface of Aelutia, but Ildries had never been too clear in his mind about how Bueloess would break through Erlos’ defences around Aelutia in order to get the missiles down to the surface of the planet.
Reality always held a bitter twist for him. There were so many unknowns in the dangerous game he was trying to play. The problem was that now after more than 30 years Mykros was no longer interested in hearing anything that Ildries had to say to him. Mykros certainly did not think he owed Ildries any gratitude or special consideration for having endowed him with the sword of Aba Mainyus. Mykros wasn't interested in listening to anyone at all. And he definitely was not going to share power on Aazyr -- with Ildries or with Bueloess, or with anyone else for that matter. Mykros saw no percentage for himself in that.
Another great difficulty for Ildries was having to work within the dense 'earth-surround' of Aelutia’s energy field. Working on Aelutia was much more difficult than working within the rarefied energy levels of Spectra City. Simple energy manipulations easily performed within Spectra City were testing Ildries’ own personal energy levels to the limit – many quite impossible. And he had to work alone. There was no-one to help him with the most difficult and exhausting tasks.
It meant that on the planet Aelutia he was limited to relatively few quite basic operations of so-called natural magic. He had turned his back on the high angelic forces with whom he had been accustomed to work on Erlos and was now confined to working with much lower though still quite powerful ‘klippoth’ forces.
And now the troublesome Aazyrian shepherd had just entered the equation, looking to upset his plans by defeating the sword of Aba Mainyus. Ildries had been forced by the limitations of what he could do upon Aelutia to resort to following Sorac in the form of a wolf. Taking over the animal’s body was one of the simple feats of natural magic he could still perform. Unfortunately he had been careless enough to let the shepherd see him -- and a split second was all it took.
(end of chapter six)
Part Two: Eldrinda of Erlos
Chapter Six
As Sorac rode down in gathering darkness through the tall pine trees toward the village by the lake, a party of men came up to meet him, and one of them stepped forward.
The man, who appeared to be their village leader, was short of stature with a bald and oddly and lumpy looking skull. He wore sandals and a belted robe and his arms hung easily at his sides while his intelligent grey eyes studied Sorac's appearance carefully for a few moments before he said: “What is your business here?”
“I seek the forest people of Kaarth,” was the shepherd's reply.
"Why?"
"I will explain to them," Sorac said.
“Why the bandages? What happened to your face?”
“I was attacked by mira in the lubyar jungle.”
“Few survive the mira,” said the short man.
“My story is a long one,” Sorac replied.
“Then you had better start talking.”
A wind came from the mountains and the brushed through the tall conifers with a long whispering sigh. Sorac was tired. He was in no mood or condition to begin at the beginning of what had brought him to this place.
"I request to pay you for food and stabling for tonight?" he said at last. "If I may sleep in the stables with Liere, tomorrow I’ll be early gone.”
The other studied him closely: “It is a fine horse you have there, my friend. Where did you get him?”
“Liere was a gift,” said Sorac.
The headman shook his head in disbelief: “How will you pay us, ragged stranger?”
“I have money.”
The headman spat on the ground: “A dead man has no use for money or for a fine horse either.”
Sorac's reaction was to string an arrow to his bow aimed at the man's throat – he would be first to die. To this the other reacted with a ghost of a smile: "We won't rob you, stranger. But you must talk now or ride away. How did you find us?”
"The wise man Kierien sent me."
"So you know Kierien?" The other lifted his chin in surprise: “Describe him then.”
"It was dark and he wore a hood and so I could not clearly see his face," Sorac answered: "But he was old and his eyes were of a violet colour.”
The brooding eyes regarded him thoughtfully: “Just who are you, young stranger?”
“I am Sorac of Aazyr.”
Suddenly the headman’s demeanor relaxed: “You are no ordinary brigand, that is clear. I will hear your tale, Sorac of Aazyr, in return for food and a bed and stabling for the night.”
He gestured with his chin at the arrow that was still pointed at his throat: ''Oh, put that down. You're tired and it's making me nervous.''
Sorac’s intuition told him to trust this man. He looked into his eyes for a few seconds longer, then he released the tension on the bowstring and dismounted. The headman, motioned to one of the other men to take Liere, but Sorac held on to the reins.
“Relax. You’ve found us,” said the headman. "I am Eldrinda."
“Still I would prefer to attend to him myself.”
“Your horse will be well cared for.”
Sorac hesitated for a moment, and then let go the reins. Liere’s ears flickered and he snorted. Sorac patted his neck reassuringly and whispered something in his ear before unbuckling his saddlebags and watching Liere let himself be led away.
A wave of weariness washed over him that made him stagger as he hefted the saddlebags onto his shoulders. It was like the exhaustion that comes after supporting a heavy weight alone for a long time, when one is at last able to release it. The headman, Eldrinda, motioned to one of the men to help him with the bags but Sorac shook his head forcefully. The other shrugged: “Come.”
He led the shepherd up to a wooden house on the lakeshore where, in the gathering dusk, a fair woman wearing a yellow dress met them on the verandah steps. "This is Tyl, my daughter," Eldrinda introduced them: "This is Sorac of Aazyr, and he is hungry."
“What happened to his face?” she gasped.
“Mira," was all Eldrinda needed to say.
“But the mira are riddled with infection!” she said.
She took Sorac’s arm: “Those wounds must be attended to at once.”
She led him up the wooden porch steps into the house where a pinewood fire blazed in a big stone fireplace. There was a long yellowood table in the middle of the room. At the other end of the room a big window opened onto the gently sloshing waters of the dark lake outside. She pulled out a chair and made him sit down at the table while she heated water in a bowl and then began carefully to soak the blood encrusted bandages from his face, her green eyes looking into his.
Above the fireplace, a fabric print in glowing colours decorated the simple wooden room. Mugs and plates were stacked on a single large piece of rough, unvarnished furniture with cupboards and drawers and shelves. There was a fresh vase of yellow mountain flowers. The shelves carried a few books and an untidy clutter of tools and weights and corks and other fishing oddments.
When all the bandages were off and she had cleaned away all the encrusted blood, she pursed her lips and stood back. “It’s already well healed,” she said, surprised. “You must have a miraculous constitution.”
Sorac felt his face with his hand. He realized it was not just his own constitution but the wise man's ointment in the saddlebags that had healed his wounds so miraculously. However one scabbed scar, which cut across his right cheek from ear to mouth, would remain with him forever as a reminder of his grim journey into Aazyr’s lubyar jungles.
She smiled. ”It’s a rugged scar. It will make you still more handsome.”
The headman had pulled up a chair and was looking over his guest without speaking, trying to learn more about him from his appearance and clothing. The sky was now dark and the air getting colder. He got up and closed the window, then sat down again.
Whoever he was, this Sorac of Aazyr was obviously not one to suffer fools gladly, he thought. There was beneath his genuine humility a hard resolve. His riding clothes were travel worn, but he was obviously was not quite comfortable inside them. He seemed to be a fellow well content in his own company – in fact that seemed to be a main feature of his personality.
Tyl shook back her long fair hair and excused herself to go to the kitchen to prepare supper, leaving the two men alone. Eldrinda went over to the cupboard and brought out a stoneware flask of amra brandy.
“You look like you could use some?”
“I’d like to check on Liere first?”
"He's in good hands."
Sorac gave in: “Forgive my rudeness. Thank you.”
Eldrinda poured a dash of the aromatic yellow liquid into a mug and pushed it across the table to the Aazyrian shepherd. “Won’t you have any?” Sorac asked him.
“No thank you. I just keep it for my guests,” Eldrinda said. “But don’t worry about me, I’m quite content. And you don't have to worry about Liere, though your concern is natural. You are safe among friends now, young stranger. And now, though you are weary, we beg your tale. Tyl can hear us from the kitchen.”
Sorac relaxed back in the plain wooden chair. At last he felt safe. The fragrant liquor warmed him on the inside. Outside in darkness, the wind picked quiet chords from the patient pines. A wolf howled somewhere on the rim of the forest. Others took up the reply.
The softly spoken shepherd began to talk.
The words came more easily as the story unfolded. Tyl came in to lay the table with grass mats. She put down a fresh loaf of bread on a board in the middle of the table.
“Supper is nearly ready, but you may start with that,” she said.
A tantalizing aroma wafted from the kitchen. The shepherd tore off a warm chunk of bread and started chewing hungrily. Eldrinda refilled Sorac's mug and nodded for him to go on.
Between mouthfuls, Sorac recalled leaving his home before dawn and told them how he had met the disciple on the road, with gifts and advice from the wise man Kierien, and how she had appeared to him later in his dream, to protect him from the mira.
“Ah yes, the lyn,” Eldrinda said. “We try to keep the knowledge to ourselves and let the mira protect us from the Ukonaai.”
"Do you mind?" He reached for Sorac's handmade bow, turning it in his hands: “You’ve made this well.”
He examined the neatly fletched arrows with their well-balanced tips as Sorac told him about his encounter with the wolf in the pine forest, and of the sense of evil he had felt from the creature. This seemed to give Eldrinda cause for thought, but he said nothing, allowing Sorac to go on with his tale, until Sorac showed him the Urinda stone.
“It is a powerful thing,” he said. “Wear it always.”
Tyl came in with a steaming pot. They ate without talking much. In spite of his earlier feelings of starvation Sorac now found that he had trouble finishing even one bowl of the stew; his fasting over the last few days seemed to have made his stomach shrink.
Afterward Eldrinda said, “There is much you should know, and it is well you came here. But explanations must wait until tomorrow, for you are too weary. I hope you will be comfortable by the fire tonight.”
He threw him a blanket and Sorac lay back in safety while the fire flickered on the hearth with the scent of pine. He was grateful for the wooden walls keeping out the wind that sighed and whispered among the swaying, creaking conifers outside. Nevertheless, his senses warned him of danger unseen, but soon he was asleep.
+++ +
Ildries Ameira hovered in the astral dimension, as he watched the shepherd go to sleep. He had already gained a great respect for Dumarion Ben’s son. A gentle soul the shepherd might be, but his reactions were swift and deadly.
Ildries had suffered an almost fatal shock from the death of the wolf by Sorac's arrow, that day in the forest. Like a powerful wave, the psychic disruption had tumbled and almost drowned him, before washing him up in a place he did not know. It had taken him a long time to find his way back to his physical body, during which time it had nearly died, being reft of its etheric counterpart.
It had taken more days for both his body and mind to recover. It still terrified him to think about it. And now this interfering shepherd was already talking to the Eldrinda, a man in whom Ildries had more than a passing interest – for it was Ildries who had left the wine infected with cesirondra in Eldrinda's apartment.
He sensed all his plans going awry. The power he had felt between Eldrinda and Sorac was very strong. It filled him with hatred for the troublesome shepherd. But someone who carried the Urinda stone, was not one to be trifled with. Ildries lived his life like a man trying to move water with a sieve.
But there was nothing more to be accomplished there tonight. He could do nothing from the astral but observe.
++++++++++++++
Ildries had been born into the ruling Ameira family on Spectra City where he had been instilled with a powerful knowledge of natural forces and how to manipulate them. And now Ildries was an example of what could happen when a Spectran adept ‘went wrong’ by employing Spectran 'casting' skills for selfish ends.
Until the death of his father at the hand of Eldrinda Benkilte, Ildries had worked unselfishly for Erlos. But since the day of his father Elront's bloody death, everything had changed. Now a fire consumed Ildries from within.
After his father’s death, the idea had solidified in Ildries' mind that Elront's killing had been planned and sanctioned at the highest level by Shelron H’rothl. To Ildries Ameira it was plain that Erlos, at Shelron's persuasion, had murdered his father.
Although like many sons, he had disagreed with many of his father’s ideas, he had never doubted his father's sincerity. He knew that whatever his father’s faults and quirks might have been, he had always acted in accordance with what he believed was in the best interests of Erlos.
In quietly and privately extending his own peace overtures towards Bueloess -- in brave and lonely defiance of stonewalling opposition from Shelron H’rothl -- Elront Ameira had walked a lonely road. A road, which turned out to be fatal.
Ildries had often tried to talk his father out of pursuing his talks with Bueloess, but neither he nor his father would ever have believed that Erlos’ leading Benkilte family would go so far as to engineer a situation in which he would be shot dead.
As if it were yesterday he never forgot the horror of that bloody corridor with Shelron shaking his father by the throat until Elront could no longer breathe and was forced in desperation to reach for his gun.
Since that day, Ildries had turned his back on the Erlos. From then on he was unable to believe in any ‘goodness’ or in any ‘right and wrong’. He would never trust anyone again nor would he show any interest in anyone’s opinions or welfare. From then on he would walk a lonely path feeling only scorn for all other human beings.
He knew it would take time, especially as he was on his own. He would need to find an ally. And unlike his father, Ildries decided it was useless to try to negotiate with Bueloess. Bueloess wanted only the metal lithos. And at any cost. The lithos was upon Aelutia. Erlos defended Aelutia. So Erlos had to be destroyed. There was no room in Bueloess' strategy for any shades of meaning that did not wrap up these ends. Bueloess was not interested in negotiations. Bueloess would accept nothing but Erlos’ complete and unconditional destruction.
Bueloess’ strategy was to set-up a base upon the planet Marion, Erlos’ closest neighbour, but Bueloess could not succeed in doing so until its own forces were stronger. While Erlos continued to defend itself, Bueloess was waiting for its main forces to reach the vortex of Sanfit, the Erlotian sun, after their long journey through deep space. Bueloess had not been able to hurry the arrival of these main forces, nor Erlos able to prevent it. The arrival was now imminent.
When a person becomes obsessed with an idea or belief, logic begins to fail.
Ildries knew he had to think well before doing anything rash. Shelron H’rothl, while he had lived, had been a force that Ildries had not been willing to confront directly. He decided on a different strategy.
But with Shelron’s death the thought of Eldrinda Benkilte as H’rothl of Erlos had been just too much for him to live with. Ildries knew he couldn’t kill Eldrinda. That was out of the question. To do so would have led to a hunt by Erlos that would inevitably have ended with his arrest.
And so he had arrived at the idea of infecting a bottle of wine with the ceisorundra virus and leaving it in Eldrinda Benkilte’s room for him to find. Ildries considered it an elegant personal revenge, pending his main scheme for complete ruin of Erlos.
After seeing what had happened to his father, Ildries understood that it would have been extremely unwise for him to have tried to carry out any plans for revenge from within Erlos. He had subsequently gone into exile on the Aelutian surface, and now lived on the continent of Aazyr. Of course this didn’t stop him from secretly visiting Erlos, from time to time.
In deciding to live on Aelutia, he had been influenced by the fact that Erlos’ highest laws forbade any form of physical interference on the surface of the planet. The penalty imposed on an Erlotian should he or she break this law was 'earthdeath' – banishment to the surface of Aelutia.
He was a high Spectran adept. He knew that in the earliest days of human existence upon Aelutia – long before Erlos came into being – the human experience of the supernal realm had been much more direct.
Angels and demons, elves and earth-spirits had once been a every-day part of human life – as real to humans as were their relationships with one another and with the animals and other creatures with whom they shared their world and their reality.
+++++
Over thousands of years the true events might never be known that gave rise to ancient myths and legends passed down through generations. But old Kierien of Centura City was quite right when he gave advice to Sorac that, like the shell of a nut, the ancient legend of a doomed civilization, and of the powerful weapon of Aba Mainyus, was a story that did indeed preserve some truth within.
The weapon of Aba Mainyus was a real and powerful thing: a force submerged but not destroyed.
Imagine if the huge and wonderful civilization of Erlos with its great space cities and powers were by some catastrophe to vanish without trace – surely the memory of Erlos and cities in the sky would live on in the memory Aelutians for ages to come and with re-telling become myth and legend. And who is to say that such a catastrophe could never happen? More than one powerful civilization has utterly vanished over time.
Although it strained Ildries’ Spectran powers to the limit – it had not been beyond him to locate and retrieve the powerful weapon of Aba Mainyus and then ‘cast’ it into the form of a beautiful sword.
He knew the energy of this weapon could be effective only within the ‘earth surround’ of the planet Aelutia. It could not be used directly against the higher energies of Erlos, and so his next step had been to seek out a petty Ukonaai chieftain of not too much intelligence to whom he could present the sword as a gift, knowing that the weapon would soon transform the recipient into the most powerful warlord Aazyr had ever known.
Ildries had never intended keeping the weapon for himself. He was a thin, physically weak man. He was definitely not the type to inspire confidence as the sword-wielding warrior leader of an army of Ukonaai. Moreover, he wanted to keep out of sight until the time came to reveal himself. Anyway the idea of physical combat reduced him to a jelly of pure fear. He needed someone else to do the killing and had chosen Mykros for his stooge.
By taking this step – by interfering physically upon the surface of the planet – Ildries had condemned himself to 'earthdeath'. It didn’t bother him. He had already left Erlos.
He knew the 'kharmic' law against sorcery – the logic implicit in the nature of the powers at the disposal of a Spectran adept -- that such developed powers may never be employed for any selfish or destructive purpose. An adept who crossed the line was a sorcerer, and sorcery is a dangerous business. Angels and demons are not lightly commanded by mortal beings. An adept who is not strong and pure-minded can find things going badly wrong. So it is said that whom the gods destroy, they first make mad.
Although the angelic and demonic natural powers may for a while be forced to do the adept's bidding, by the adept’s studied knowledge and command of the laws governing the dimensions of their own existence, these powers will always be able to outlast the ability of any mortal to direct them.
Once a human has lost the support of the angelic forces by abusing his power over them – once the angelic forces have deserted him – then the demonic 'klippoth' forces will be free to 'turn around and rend him' like dogs against a hated master. They will delight in exacting cruel revenge upon him for ever believing that he, a mere mortal, could ever truly control them.
First, they will rejoice in destroying his reason. They will force him to lacerate and torture his own body. They will cause him to destroy everything he cares most about, and to wreak havoc on those he most loves. They will possess him and through his physical senses abandon themselves to gluttony and lust and every other debased and deadly sin available to their enjoyment in the physical dimension.
After many years of this -- when they begin to tire of such earthbound games in the physical world -- they will force him to take his own life in some horrible way, and then will drag his broken spirit down to their own dimension.
It is a horrifying prospect but Ildries didn’t care. His obsession was too strong. He’d deal with the consequences when they arrived. Indeed Ildries Ameira was starting to think of himself as the' H'zaan -- the chosen one' and to believe that he alone perceived the crack between worlds --that he alone knew how to bridge the valley between light and darkness.
Like anyone else he needed to be able to justify himself to himself. But he had other problems, and at the time the biggest of these was the Emperor Mykros of the Ukonaai. Ildries’ original plan had been for Mykros first to break the heart and spirit of Erlos by invading and looting the garden kingdom, and then for Mykros to allow Bueloess to set-up missile bases on Aazyr – in which case Erlos would have no choice but surrender or face annihilation.
But like all Ildries’ other schemes, this one had been slapped together as the ideas arose. He’d never really thought it through. It was true that Erlos’ high law would indeed prevent Erlos from blasting Buelotian missile bases on the surface of Aelutia, but Ildries had never been too clear in his mind about how Bueloess would break through Erlos’ defences around Aelutia in order to get the missiles down to the surface of the planet.
Reality always held a bitter twist for him. There were so many unknowns in the dangerous game he was trying to play. The problem was that now after more than 30 years Mykros was no longer interested in hearing anything that Ildries had to say to him. Mykros certainly did not think he owed Ildries any gratitude or special consideration for having endowed him with the sword of Aba Mainyus. Mykros wasn't interested in listening to anyone at all. And he definitely was not going to share power on Aazyr -- with Ildries or with Bueloess, or with anyone else for that matter. Mykros saw no percentage for himself in that.
Another great difficulty for Ildries was having to work within the dense 'earth-surround' of Aelutia’s energy field. Working on Aelutia was much more difficult than working within the rarefied energy levels of Spectra City. Simple energy manipulations easily performed within Spectra City were testing Ildries’ own personal energy levels to the limit – many quite impossible. And he had to work alone. There was no-one to help him with the most difficult and exhausting tasks.
It meant that on the planet Aelutia he was limited to relatively few quite basic operations of so-called natural magic. He had turned his back on the high angelic forces with whom he had been accustomed to work on Erlos and was now confined to working with much lower though still quite powerful ‘klippoth’ forces.
And now the troublesome Aazyrian shepherd had just entered the equation, looking to upset his plans by defeating the sword of Aba Mainyus. Ildries had been forced by the limitations of what he could do upon Aelutia to resort to following Sorac in the form of a wolf. Taking over the animal’s body was one of the simple feats of natural magic he could still perform. Unfortunately he had been careless enough to let the shepherd see him -- and a split second was all it took.
(end of chapter six)
Last edited:
Faithfulservant
Well-Known Member
I'm thoroughly enjoying it!
ERLOS
Chapter Seven
Sorac woke when a shaft of sunlight touched his face. He rose and went over to the window. The sun was rising into a clear blue sky over the snowy peaks of the Mynar Ryn mountains. Boats crawled like beetles upon the still expanse of water below. An early fisherman cast his nets. The water shattered into a thousand glittering diamonds where the nets fell in a half circle round the boat. White gulls wheeled, keening overhead.
The house was quiet. Sorac decided to take a swim. He made his way down to a shingle beach. He stripped off his clothes and dived naked into the lake. The cold shock forced the breath from his lungs. He surfaced gasping and splashed out into the lake until the cold was too much for him, so he swam back, sat down on a rock and dried himself in the sun.
Later he sought out the stables. Liere lifted his head alertly when he saw him. The stallion’s wounds from the mira had healed well, with the help of Kierien’s magical ointment, and he had been groomed and fed. He nuzzled a tidbit from Sorac’s palm.
Sorac left him and returned to the house, remembering the sense of dread which he had felt after his conversation with Eldrinda the night before – the same foreboding he had felt before he saw and killed the wolf in the forest. The feeling had left him before he went to sleep , and now it was gone. The smell of baking bread wafted towards him as he reached the veranda steps. He entered the house to find Tyl busy in the kitchen.
“You're up early,” she smiled.
She told him that her father was out on the lake. She offered him tea flavoured with herbs and sweetened with honey. He sat down to drink it at the table. He realized she was troubled by something, but as a traveling stranger he thought it rude to ask.
Of such stock as Tyl were many of Aelutia’s inhabitants -- content and simple in their ways, in particular the Eagle People of Kaarth who still retained something of the community way of life of the old garden kingdoms, which Mykros had destroyed in Aazyr. They were a hardy people, surrounded by the natural defences of the lubyar forests and the Mynar Ryn Mountains against the Ukonaai.
They were largely self-contained, needing little from the outside world. Here light still burned in deepening darkness. Among such people, who still lived by the old ways, few wanted for anything but such simple comforts as found in Eldrinda’s peaceful home. If jewels were worn it was not for ostentation, but for their mystic power and beauty.
He watched Tyl’s firm hands kneading dough and realized she was beautiful. She prepared a simple meal.
“After breakfast I will show you around the village,” she offered.
“I've already found the village stables,” he said.
She led him out on to the verandah. Water slapped gently among the rushes below them. “After so many days without food I still feel full from supper last night,” he said.
“Your appetite will soon return,” she said. “My father has words for you and asks that you accept our invitation to stay with us until you are fully rested, or at least for another day.”
He smiled: “It seems I have no choice.”
After a light breakfast she led him around the village, introducing him to the potter, the weaver, the blacksmith and the boat maker -- a giant of a man who looked up from his chiselling and ceased for a moment his tuneless whistling to acknowledge her greeting with a smile that exposed a mouth lacking as many teeth as it still possessed.
“Toache, the Bear, was born dumb, but his boats are light and strong,” she said, as they moved away.
Eldrinda came in off the lake and Sorac followed Tyl down to the boathouse, a thatched roof on poles among the rushes.
“How did you sleep?” Eldrinda asked him, unloading fish from the boat.
“I slept very well, thank you. And Tyl has made me feel at home,” replied the shepherd.
He helped Eldrinda secure the boat and unload his catch. Then they made their way up to the house, carrying fish and oars and nets. “Dump the nets on the porch,” Eldrinda said, taking the fish inside. “I'm going to wash and change before lunch.”
Sorac sat on the wooden steps until the other returned and offered him a drink. Tyl grilled the fish and served the meal on the verandah.
“Although you’ve been too polite to seem obviously curious about it,” said Eldrinda, “my appearance must seem a bit odd to you?” He ran a hand over the ridges on his head.
Sorac shrugged. What of it? Everyone was different and he knew little of the world beyond the small Aazyrian village where he’d grown up.
“I am not of your world.” Eldrinda said.
Before Sorac could speak the other raised a hand: “I will have much to say that will be strange to you, my brave young friend. Try to hear my story to the end. Later if you’re still puzzled, I will be happy to explain?”
Sorac nodded agreement. He loved nothing better than a tale and nothing could make him happier right now than to another’s story for a change.
“Above Aelutia there is another world,” Eldrinda said, “It is a world of cities in the sky, which sometimes at night you will see as moving stars, and it is from one of the greatest of those cities that I was born."
He told Sorac the circumstances surrounding his emergency coronation after the death of his father Shelron and explained to him how his wine had been poisoned with the ceisorundra virus of madness.
"Lucky for me, my friend Sumadji's prompt action enabled the doctors to catch the virus before it could destroy my mind completely, but it had already damaged my brain. And so, I abdicated in favour of my sister Auldrius, and came down here to live upon Aelutia. I suffered from nightmares when I was asleep and from crippling headaches much of the time when I was awake, that made it hard for me to concentrate on anything.
“I couldn’t be with anyone for more than a few minutes before they exhausted me. I’d find myself unable to recognize the person I was talking to. I had full recall of everything before I put that glass to my lips, but after that everything was fragmentary.
“And so I decided to leave Erlos for a while -- to live upon the surface of Aelutia as a hermit in the mountains, away from other people, eating roots and fruits and berries like an animal." He looked up to see if he still had the shepherd’s attention. Sorac nodded for him to go on.
"I learned that angels were always there to guide me and so, through periods of hunger, I learned by fasting that nature has the ability to heal the mind and body," he said.
“I learned to live on water alone -- first for three days then for thirty – while nature’s healing angels of life and air and sunshine cleansed my brain of the effects of the ceisorundra virus. As my mind recovered, Eloih’s angels lifted my spirit into the higher worlds of knowledge, which I have no words to describe.
“In those days, surrounded by the stillness of the mountains and by the great peace of Eloih, I needed nothing but air and water, and sunlight and a little simple food to sustain my body while my spirit ranged free and far above the world. The angels held me up; I was able to look down on the natural world – to learn its laws, and to understand the language of its creatures. I knew them and they knew me, and when I was weak, the ravens brought me food.
“I watched the drifting eagle and the fiery-hearted kingfisher -- the gorgeously plumaged little hummingbird, the delicate snail, the insects, bees and animals -- all attending to their own concerns, every bit as important to them as were my own to me.
“I learned to listen and to understand them. I learned the language of the trees and of the grass, and of the mountains and the wind. I drank pure water from the mountain springs, where above me the sky rimmed and filled and poured over in the colours of opal and amethyst: depth of precious stones into which every day I learned to see further.”
Sorac thumbed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, listening quietly, as was his way. A gull attracted by the nets swooped low then came to rest on the wooden railing of the verandah, turning its head from side to side, quizzing them first with one yellow eye, then the other as the water splashed and sloshed gently in the reeds below them.
“The things visible to us in this world are just shadows of forms in higher dimensions which our limited senses of sight, touch, hearing and so on cannot directly perceive,” Eldrinda said. "I learned that Love in the highest sense of oneness, is the first emanation of creation, from which all other emanations are born, in the same way that sunlight enables all the myriad forms of life upon Aelutia to exist.
“It is Love, reflected down as if by screens, dividing into ever more complex forms and forces and losing a little of its original brightness with each reflection, that binds and upholds the universe with all the myriad hidden worlds and dimensions as the parts of one great living whole.
“It was the most wonderful time of my life. But it was not to last," he said: "Before long the people round about began to venerate me and treat me as a holy man: the hermit in the mountains with his strange Erlotian wisdom and the ridges on his head. They used to bring gifts and fancy foods and clothing in exchange for my supposed wisdom and blessing.
“People travelled great distances. They came in groups, camping around my hut, talking and eating and making fires and scaring away the birds and animals that were my friends and companions. Eventually some began to settle permanently, building their huts close to mine. The peace and solitude I had enjoyed was taken from me. I knew the time had come for me to leave.
"And so I came down from the mountains and I began life as a fisherman here in the village by the lake amongst the forest people of Kaarth. But was not long alone because I met Tyl’s mother and Tyl was born here in this house but her mother died when Tyl was three years old."
Sorac sat there, quietly puffing smoke and thinking about it all. The gull flapped up from the railing and drifted off across the lake in its never ending search for a meal.
Tyl brought a tray of tea and biscuits.
At the sight of food the sharp-eyed gull again came gliding down from its travels around the lake to perch alertly on the railing, swivelling its whole head from side to side in expectation. Tyl threw it a biscuit and the gull soared easily to snatch it from the air before returning to its perch with the he morsel vanished down its gullet.
++++++++++++
There was a disdainful expression upon the face of the Emperor Mykros' as Ildries entered the study which had once belonged to Dumarion Ben, but which Mykros had decorated to his own opulent taste.
“Oh, it’s you again,” he said.
He listened without comment, sipping his beer while Ildries told him about the shepherd’s quest for the Sword of Mycyl.
“I’ve many enemies,” Mykros said at last, when Ildries had finished speaking.
“He’s different,” Ildries replied.
“How is he different? Has he four arms? Has he two heads?”
“He has great power,” was Ildries' reply. “He’s dangerous to you.”
He had nearly said 'us'. He had stopped his tongue just in time.
The Emperor looked at him with contempt.. Having gained Mykros’ presence, Ildries, like most others, now just wanted to get away from him.
“Go on” he said.
There had been a time once when he had listened to Ildries, but now he felt only contempt for the devious Erlotian wizard.
“He’s Dumarion Ben’s son," said Ildries. "He has powerful Erlotian allies. He is on a quest to find the one weapon which alone has power to break the sword of Aba Mainyus. You must hunt him down and kill him."
At this point Mykros moved forward and pushed Ildries, who stumbled back against the bar, rattling decanters.
"No," he said. "I will not hunt this boy, for he has courage. But that’s something you can’t be expected to understand."
He reached past Ildries for his beer. He took a sip from the bottle then put it back on the polished wooden surface.
“Let this shepherd win the sword of Mycyl! Let him win it, if he can. He will be a worthy opponent at last. Let him win the sword. Then I shall fight him. And I shall win.”
He laid a gloved hand on the hilt of his sword: “I’ll spare your life today, in full and final payment of my debt. But If you ever come this close to my face again, it will be the last thing you see before you become a wraith of the sword.”
He rang for guards: “Show him the gate. But throw him into the fishpond on his way out."
+++++++++++++++
They drank their tea, then Tyl rose to put the cups on the tray, causing the gull to drift off across the glittering water. Sorac pushed his chair back to help clear the table but she put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. "I'll be back to rescue you if my father talks too long."
"No man could ask for a better child," Eldrinda said as she went back into the house. "I cannot even start to imagine what my life would be like without her."
"What was her mother like? What was her name?" asked Sorac.
"Her name was Nyla. She first came to me as a disciple, and then we became lovers. I loved her with every part of me. But forgive me if I prefer not to speak of her now," Eldrinda said.
“I’m very sorry,” Sorac said.
Eldrinda shrugged. “There is fate and there is destiny. A man may shape his fate, but not his destiny. You find yourself pushing at a locked door; you keep coming back to the same door, finding it locked, time and time again, until in the end that’s all you’re doing with your life: pushing at a locked door. Knowing when to accept that it’s locked, may be the hardest thing a human is born to learn.”
Sorac nodded. He understood.
Eldrinda turned his head to watch the white gull floating effortlessly on air against the rocky background of the Mynar Run mountains. He was considering how to move his subject up a level: how to describe the issues of space travel and Erlotian war to someone who, though far from stupid, had never learned to read or write and who could conceive of no faster means of transport than a horse.
But the shepherd had grasped everything he'd spoken about so far and was obviously willing to give the subject his full attention. Eldrinda decided the best approach would be to let him dive in.
''Our Erlotian cities are really great spacecraft, able to move easily between planets, each powered by mighty engines and inhabited by many millions of people,'' he said.
''Life is not defined by the form it inhabits. Life is what animates the form. So there are life forms on other planets that are invisible or unrecognizable to us.
“However, the point I’m trying to get to is that although our cities can move about easily and very swiftly between the close planets within the solar vortex of Sanfit, our sun, we find it much more difficult to move out beyond the solar vortex into what we call interstellar space. Stars are very far away.
"It would millions or thousands of millions of years to reach some of the stars, even if we could travel at the speed of light. And nothing in nature can ever travel faster than light,” he said
How was he going to explain the light-barrier?
But Sorac just nodded, accepting the other's wisdom. Then suddenly, involuntarily, he yawned. By now the sun was completing its journey across the sky to begin its descent towards the eastern mountains. Out on the lake the last boats had hauled in their nets and were creeping back to shore like insects on a mirror that perfectly reflected the mountains and the sky.
"Please forgive me,” said Eldrinda. “I must stop now. You're tired.”
“No, no.” Sorac was genuinely dismayed, “I wish you to go on,” he said.
"Where was I, then?" Eldrinda said.
"Your cities cannot reach the stars," Sorac replied. He had grasped the issue.
"Yes. No. Well ... actually we think they can," Eldrinda said. “Our cities can travel at about one third of light-speed. So in fact it is possible for us to reach close stars. The nearest star is five light-years away. So it would take about 25 years to reach it, longer because of acceleration and deceleration -- and of course as long again to return home. But most stars are much further away than that. The planet Bueloess, with which Erlos is at war, is millions of light years distant.
“'Bueloess is our name for the ancient enemy we’ve been fighting for 600 years. In our language Bueloess means the ‘opposite’ or ‘adversary’ to Erlos. Bueloess’ spacecraft have been traveling for millions of years, spreading outwards in all directions from a distant star, at about one-fifth of light-speed," Eldrinda said.
Sorac nodded.
“I’ll tell you more about Bueloess later,” Eldrinda said. “Because first I need to explain the importance of the metal lithos. The technology of space travel centres upon lithos, which is very abundant here on Aelutia. It is the lightest of all metals. This makes it useful for building spacecraft. All our cities are built on structures made from lithos. Bueloess too needs lithos for the construction of its spacecraft. And this is where the problem lies: Bueloess wants Aelutia’s lithos.
“Lithos is a very soft metal. You can cut it with a knife and it rusts quickly away in air. But neither of these things matter in space where there is no air at all, and everything is moving so fast that a grain of dust can penetrate even the hardest of metals. So large spacecraft need to be protected by force fields, anyway.”
“The main point to grasp is that although Bueloess is very ancient, it has an extremely primitive understanding of space travel when compared to that of Erlos. While Bueloess uses lithos only for its lightness as a construction material – Erlos understands that lithos, when properly employed, is a very powerful conductor of vortexian energy.
''Vortexia is the Erlotian science of learning to harness the energy of will in order to bridge the gap between the mental and the physical -- between thoughts and things – which are really just two different manifestations of the same energy. We call that energy vortexia
“So Erlos believes our cities have the ability to break through the light barrier – to escape from four-dimensional space onto fifth dimensional innerspace --where we will be able to travel at the speed of mind along innerspace roadways and to cross the huge distance between stars in just a very small fraction of the time it would take to travel the same distance through the outerspace at below light speed to reach the planet Bueloess and to destroy it.''
Sorac nodded, smoking. He could follow most of it.
The sun was crimson as it began to sink behind the Mynar Ryn, turning the mountain snow pink and with the same scarlet brush painting a bloody streak across the darkening water. The last warmth of the day evaporated beneath a darkening sky. Stars starting to appear and a quick cold wind gusted ripples across the lake, its further bank now invisible against the darkness of the trees.
Eldrinda got up. "Let's go inside," he said.
Sorac followed him in and Eldrinda started stacking wood into the big fireplace, beneath the glowing colours of the fabric design that hung above the mantlepiece. Outside above the black lake, seen through the big window, a yellow half-moon was rising above the mountains. The smell of food cooking wafted in from the kitchen.
Eldrinda was on his knees, lighting the fire and blowing to get it going, his eyes watering with the smoke. When the yellow flames took to the wood he stood up and went to the cupboard and he bought out the brandy flask and put it on the table, followed by two mugs. "I may have one myself, for once," he said, pouring a dash of brandy into his mug, which he then topped up with water before pushing the flask across the table to Sorac.
"I apologize if I've tired you with all my words today,” he said. “There's not much more I need to tell, but the last part is the most important.” He sipped from his mug. Sorac noticed that the diluted brandy had hardly been touched and he concluded that Eldrinda had only poured himself a drink so as not to seem rude by letting him drink alone.
“Erlos’ scientists don’t really understand the details, but this property of lithos to work as a conductor of vortexian energy means that lithos can be responsive to the power of thought -- to mind-waves – although one mind alone can never hope to generate waves powerful enough.
“In fact it would take the power of many millions of minds working together in the most perfect harmony – and then concentrated through what Erlos calls a triangle of power – to create a thought ray powerful enough to activate the lithos in the way intended.
"And so the main work of all Erlotians must now become the work of harmony of thought. And you will appreciate that it’s not something that a civilization like Bueloess could ever learn to do? But Bueloess needs lithos because it is the lightest of all metals.”
Eldrinda sat forward with two hands wrapped around his mug and looked enquiringly at Sorac to make sure he understood. Sorac nodded. He simply accepted what the other had to say.
“Bueloess has been building its spacecraft upon lithos for millions and millions of years,” Eldrinda continued: “Bueloess uses a lot of lithos. So Bueloess raids new worlds for lithos, and destroying those worlds by its extraction, to build more spacecraft, to raid new worlds, to build more spacecraft -- machines building machines like themselves, and better than themselves -- forever.”
An owl hooted in the dark forest. Sorac rose to put more wood on the fire. “There's more wood on the porch, when that is gone,” Eldrinda said.
"After reaching out through space for millions and millions of years Bueloess' main forces will soon start arriving here The world closest to Aelutia is named Marion. Bueloess is trying to take over Marion, to use it as a base from which to attack Erlos with missiles that Erlos will not be able to defend against, and then with Erlos out of the picture to strip Aelutia of its lithos in a savage process that will quickly kill everything that lives.
“There's no time left. Erlos has to attack Bueloess through the innerspace. Yet Erlos' Council of Seven are still tangled in the same interminable debate that they’ve been engaged in for the last twenty-five years. There’s no time left. I have to convince them. I must return to Erlos. I have to persuade them.”
Tyl bought food and they ate.
“When will you go?” the shepherd asked.
“Very soon now,” was the reply.
Their conversation lasted late into the night, until at last Sorac could no longer keep his eyes open; he rolled himself up in his blanket by the fire. Beyond the wooden walls of the house, the treetops swayed and sighed in the wind.
(end of Book One)
Chapter Seven
Sorac woke when a shaft of sunlight touched his face. He rose and went over to the window. The sun was rising into a clear blue sky over the snowy peaks of the Mynar Ryn mountains. Boats crawled like beetles upon the still expanse of water below. An early fisherman cast his nets. The water shattered into a thousand glittering diamonds where the nets fell in a half circle round the boat. White gulls wheeled, keening overhead.
The house was quiet. Sorac decided to take a swim. He made his way down to a shingle beach. He stripped off his clothes and dived naked into the lake. The cold shock forced the breath from his lungs. He surfaced gasping and splashed out into the lake until the cold was too much for him, so he swam back, sat down on a rock and dried himself in the sun.
Later he sought out the stables. Liere lifted his head alertly when he saw him. The stallion’s wounds from the mira had healed well, with the help of Kierien’s magical ointment, and he had been groomed and fed. He nuzzled a tidbit from Sorac’s palm.
Sorac left him and returned to the house, remembering the sense of dread which he had felt after his conversation with Eldrinda the night before – the same foreboding he had felt before he saw and killed the wolf in the forest. The feeling had left him before he went to sleep , and now it was gone. The smell of baking bread wafted towards him as he reached the veranda steps. He entered the house to find Tyl busy in the kitchen.
“You're up early,” she smiled.
She told him that her father was out on the lake. She offered him tea flavoured with herbs and sweetened with honey. He sat down to drink it at the table. He realized she was troubled by something, but as a traveling stranger he thought it rude to ask.
Of such stock as Tyl were many of Aelutia’s inhabitants -- content and simple in their ways, in particular the Eagle People of Kaarth who still retained something of the community way of life of the old garden kingdoms, which Mykros had destroyed in Aazyr. They were a hardy people, surrounded by the natural defences of the lubyar forests and the Mynar Ryn Mountains against the Ukonaai.
They were largely self-contained, needing little from the outside world. Here light still burned in deepening darkness. Among such people, who still lived by the old ways, few wanted for anything but such simple comforts as found in Eldrinda’s peaceful home. If jewels were worn it was not for ostentation, but for their mystic power and beauty.
He watched Tyl’s firm hands kneading dough and realized she was beautiful. She prepared a simple meal.
“After breakfast I will show you around the village,” she offered.
“I've already found the village stables,” he said.
She led him out on to the verandah. Water slapped gently among the rushes below them. “After so many days without food I still feel full from supper last night,” he said.
“Your appetite will soon return,” she said. “My father has words for you and asks that you accept our invitation to stay with us until you are fully rested, or at least for another day.”
He smiled: “It seems I have no choice.”
After a light breakfast she led him around the village, introducing him to the potter, the weaver, the blacksmith and the boat maker -- a giant of a man who looked up from his chiselling and ceased for a moment his tuneless whistling to acknowledge her greeting with a smile that exposed a mouth lacking as many teeth as it still possessed.
“Toache, the Bear, was born dumb, but his boats are light and strong,” she said, as they moved away.
Eldrinda came in off the lake and Sorac followed Tyl down to the boathouse, a thatched roof on poles among the rushes.
“How did you sleep?” Eldrinda asked him, unloading fish from the boat.
“I slept very well, thank you. And Tyl has made me feel at home,” replied the shepherd.
He helped Eldrinda secure the boat and unload his catch. Then they made their way up to the house, carrying fish and oars and nets. “Dump the nets on the porch,” Eldrinda said, taking the fish inside. “I'm going to wash and change before lunch.”
Sorac sat on the wooden steps until the other returned and offered him a drink. Tyl grilled the fish and served the meal on the verandah.
“Although you’ve been too polite to seem obviously curious about it,” said Eldrinda, “my appearance must seem a bit odd to you?” He ran a hand over the ridges on his head.
Sorac shrugged. What of it? Everyone was different and he knew little of the world beyond the small Aazyrian village where he’d grown up.
“I am not of your world.” Eldrinda said.
Before Sorac could speak the other raised a hand: “I will have much to say that will be strange to you, my brave young friend. Try to hear my story to the end. Later if you’re still puzzled, I will be happy to explain?”
Sorac nodded agreement. He loved nothing better than a tale and nothing could make him happier right now than to another’s story for a change.
“Above Aelutia there is another world,” Eldrinda said, “It is a world of cities in the sky, which sometimes at night you will see as moving stars, and it is from one of the greatest of those cities that I was born."
He told Sorac the circumstances surrounding his emergency coronation after the death of his father Shelron and explained to him how his wine had been poisoned with the ceisorundra virus of madness.
"Lucky for me, my friend Sumadji's prompt action enabled the doctors to catch the virus before it could destroy my mind completely, but it had already damaged my brain. And so, I abdicated in favour of my sister Auldrius, and came down here to live upon Aelutia. I suffered from nightmares when I was asleep and from crippling headaches much of the time when I was awake, that made it hard for me to concentrate on anything.
“I couldn’t be with anyone for more than a few minutes before they exhausted me. I’d find myself unable to recognize the person I was talking to. I had full recall of everything before I put that glass to my lips, but after that everything was fragmentary.
“And so I decided to leave Erlos for a while -- to live upon the surface of Aelutia as a hermit in the mountains, away from other people, eating roots and fruits and berries like an animal." He looked up to see if he still had the shepherd’s attention. Sorac nodded for him to go on.
"I learned that angels were always there to guide me and so, through periods of hunger, I learned by fasting that nature has the ability to heal the mind and body," he said.
“I learned to live on water alone -- first for three days then for thirty – while nature’s healing angels of life and air and sunshine cleansed my brain of the effects of the ceisorundra virus. As my mind recovered, Eloih’s angels lifted my spirit into the higher worlds of knowledge, which I have no words to describe.
“In those days, surrounded by the stillness of the mountains and by the great peace of Eloih, I needed nothing but air and water, and sunlight and a little simple food to sustain my body while my spirit ranged free and far above the world. The angels held me up; I was able to look down on the natural world – to learn its laws, and to understand the language of its creatures. I knew them and they knew me, and when I was weak, the ravens brought me food.
“I watched the drifting eagle and the fiery-hearted kingfisher -- the gorgeously plumaged little hummingbird, the delicate snail, the insects, bees and animals -- all attending to their own concerns, every bit as important to them as were my own to me.
“I learned to listen and to understand them. I learned the language of the trees and of the grass, and of the mountains and the wind. I drank pure water from the mountain springs, where above me the sky rimmed and filled and poured over in the colours of opal and amethyst: depth of precious stones into which every day I learned to see further.”
Sorac thumbed tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, listening quietly, as was his way. A gull attracted by the nets swooped low then came to rest on the wooden railing of the verandah, turning its head from side to side, quizzing them first with one yellow eye, then the other as the water splashed and sloshed gently in the reeds below them.
“The things visible to us in this world are just shadows of forms in higher dimensions which our limited senses of sight, touch, hearing and so on cannot directly perceive,” Eldrinda said. "I learned that Love in the highest sense of oneness, is the first emanation of creation, from which all other emanations are born, in the same way that sunlight enables all the myriad forms of life upon Aelutia to exist.
“It is Love, reflected down as if by screens, dividing into ever more complex forms and forces and losing a little of its original brightness with each reflection, that binds and upholds the universe with all the myriad hidden worlds and dimensions as the parts of one great living whole.
“It was the most wonderful time of my life. But it was not to last," he said: "Before long the people round about began to venerate me and treat me as a holy man: the hermit in the mountains with his strange Erlotian wisdom and the ridges on his head. They used to bring gifts and fancy foods and clothing in exchange for my supposed wisdom and blessing.
“People travelled great distances. They came in groups, camping around my hut, talking and eating and making fires and scaring away the birds and animals that were my friends and companions. Eventually some began to settle permanently, building their huts close to mine. The peace and solitude I had enjoyed was taken from me. I knew the time had come for me to leave.
"And so I came down from the mountains and I began life as a fisherman here in the village by the lake amongst the forest people of Kaarth. But was not long alone because I met Tyl’s mother and Tyl was born here in this house but her mother died when Tyl was three years old."
Sorac sat there, quietly puffing smoke and thinking about it all. The gull flapped up from the railing and drifted off across the lake in its never ending search for a meal.
Tyl brought a tray of tea and biscuits.
At the sight of food the sharp-eyed gull again came gliding down from its travels around the lake to perch alertly on the railing, swivelling its whole head from side to side in expectation. Tyl threw it a biscuit and the gull soared easily to snatch it from the air before returning to its perch with the he morsel vanished down its gullet.
++++++++++++
There was a disdainful expression upon the face of the Emperor Mykros' as Ildries entered the study which had once belonged to Dumarion Ben, but which Mykros had decorated to his own opulent taste.
“Oh, it’s you again,” he said.
He listened without comment, sipping his beer while Ildries told him about the shepherd’s quest for the Sword of Mycyl.
“I’ve many enemies,” Mykros said at last, when Ildries had finished speaking.
“He’s different,” Ildries replied.
“How is he different? Has he four arms? Has he two heads?”
“He has great power,” was Ildries' reply. “He’s dangerous to you.”
He had nearly said 'us'. He had stopped his tongue just in time.
The Emperor looked at him with contempt.. Having gained Mykros’ presence, Ildries, like most others, now just wanted to get away from him.
“Go on” he said.
There had been a time once when he had listened to Ildries, but now he felt only contempt for the devious Erlotian wizard.
“He’s Dumarion Ben’s son," said Ildries. "He has powerful Erlotian allies. He is on a quest to find the one weapon which alone has power to break the sword of Aba Mainyus. You must hunt him down and kill him."
At this point Mykros moved forward and pushed Ildries, who stumbled back against the bar, rattling decanters.
"No," he said. "I will not hunt this boy, for he has courage. But that’s something you can’t be expected to understand."
He reached past Ildries for his beer. He took a sip from the bottle then put it back on the polished wooden surface.
“Let this shepherd win the sword of Mycyl! Let him win it, if he can. He will be a worthy opponent at last. Let him win the sword. Then I shall fight him. And I shall win.”
He laid a gloved hand on the hilt of his sword: “I’ll spare your life today, in full and final payment of my debt. But If you ever come this close to my face again, it will be the last thing you see before you become a wraith of the sword.”
He rang for guards: “Show him the gate. But throw him into the fishpond on his way out."
+++++++++++++++
They drank their tea, then Tyl rose to put the cups on the tray, causing the gull to drift off across the glittering water. Sorac pushed his chair back to help clear the table but she put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. "I'll be back to rescue you if my father talks too long."
"No man could ask for a better child," Eldrinda said as she went back into the house. "I cannot even start to imagine what my life would be like without her."
"What was her mother like? What was her name?" asked Sorac.
"Her name was Nyla. She first came to me as a disciple, and then we became lovers. I loved her with every part of me. But forgive me if I prefer not to speak of her now," Eldrinda said.
“I’m very sorry,” Sorac said.
Eldrinda shrugged. “There is fate and there is destiny. A man may shape his fate, but not his destiny. You find yourself pushing at a locked door; you keep coming back to the same door, finding it locked, time and time again, until in the end that’s all you’re doing with your life: pushing at a locked door. Knowing when to accept that it’s locked, may be the hardest thing a human is born to learn.”
Sorac nodded. He understood.
Eldrinda turned his head to watch the white gull floating effortlessly on air against the rocky background of the Mynar Run mountains. He was considering how to move his subject up a level: how to describe the issues of space travel and Erlotian war to someone who, though far from stupid, had never learned to read or write and who could conceive of no faster means of transport than a horse.
But the shepherd had grasped everything he'd spoken about so far and was obviously willing to give the subject his full attention. Eldrinda decided the best approach would be to let him dive in.
''Our Erlotian cities are really great spacecraft, able to move easily between planets, each powered by mighty engines and inhabited by many millions of people,'' he said.
''Life is not defined by the form it inhabits. Life is what animates the form. So there are life forms on other planets that are invisible or unrecognizable to us.
“However, the point I’m trying to get to is that although our cities can move about easily and very swiftly between the close planets within the solar vortex of Sanfit, our sun, we find it much more difficult to move out beyond the solar vortex into what we call interstellar space. Stars are very far away.
"It would millions or thousands of millions of years to reach some of the stars, even if we could travel at the speed of light. And nothing in nature can ever travel faster than light,” he said
How was he going to explain the light-barrier?
But Sorac just nodded, accepting the other's wisdom. Then suddenly, involuntarily, he yawned. By now the sun was completing its journey across the sky to begin its descent towards the eastern mountains. Out on the lake the last boats had hauled in their nets and were creeping back to shore like insects on a mirror that perfectly reflected the mountains and the sky.
"Please forgive me,” said Eldrinda. “I must stop now. You're tired.”
“No, no.” Sorac was genuinely dismayed, “I wish you to go on,” he said.
"Where was I, then?" Eldrinda said.
"Your cities cannot reach the stars," Sorac replied. He had grasped the issue.
"Yes. No. Well ... actually we think they can," Eldrinda said. “Our cities can travel at about one third of light-speed. So in fact it is possible for us to reach close stars. The nearest star is five light-years away. So it would take about 25 years to reach it, longer because of acceleration and deceleration -- and of course as long again to return home. But most stars are much further away than that. The planet Bueloess, with which Erlos is at war, is millions of light years distant.
“'Bueloess is our name for the ancient enemy we’ve been fighting for 600 years. In our language Bueloess means the ‘opposite’ or ‘adversary’ to Erlos. Bueloess’ spacecraft have been traveling for millions of years, spreading outwards in all directions from a distant star, at about one-fifth of light-speed," Eldrinda said.
Sorac nodded.
“I’ll tell you more about Bueloess later,” Eldrinda said. “Because first I need to explain the importance of the metal lithos. The technology of space travel centres upon lithos, which is very abundant here on Aelutia. It is the lightest of all metals. This makes it useful for building spacecraft. All our cities are built on structures made from lithos. Bueloess too needs lithos for the construction of its spacecraft. And this is where the problem lies: Bueloess wants Aelutia’s lithos.
“Lithos is a very soft metal. You can cut it with a knife and it rusts quickly away in air. But neither of these things matter in space where there is no air at all, and everything is moving so fast that a grain of dust can penetrate even the hardest of metals. So large spacecraft need to be protected by force fields, anyway.”
“The main point to grasp is that although Bueloess is very ancient, it has an extremely primitive understanding of space travel when compared to that of Erlos. While Bueloess uses lithos only for its lightness as a construction material – Erlos understands that lithos, when properly employed, is a very powerful conductor of vortexian energy.
''Vortexia is the Erlotian science of learning to harness the energy of will in order to bridge the gap between the mental and the physical -- between thoughts and things – which are really just two different manifestations of the same energy. We call that energy vortexia
“So Erlos believes our cities have the ability to break through the light barrier – to escape from four-dimensional space onto fifth dimensional innerspace --where we will be able to travel at the speed of mind along innerspace roadways and to cross the huge distance between stars in just a very small fraction of the time it would take to travel the same distance through the outerspace at below light speed to reach the planet Bueloess and to destroy it.''
Sorac nodded, smoking. He could follow most of it.
The sun was crimson as it began to sink behind the Mynar Ryn, turning the mountain snow pink and with the same scarlet brush painting a bloody streak across the darkening water. The last warmth of the day evaporated beneath a darkening sky. Stars starting to appear and a quick cold wind gusted ripples across the lake, its further bank now invisible against the darkness of the trees.
Eldrinda got up. "Let's go inside," he said.
Sorac followed him in and Eldrinda started stacking wood into the big fireplace, beneath the glowing colours of the fabric design that hung above the mantlepiece. Outside above the black lake, seen through the big window, a yellow half-moon was rising above the mountains. The smell of food cooking wafted in from the kitchen.
Eldrinda was on his knees, lighting the fire and blowing to get it going, his eyes watering with the smoke. When the yellow flames took to the wood he stood up and went to the cupboard and he bought out the brandy flask and put it on the table, followed by two mugs. "I may have one myself, for once," he said, pouring a dash of brandy into his mug, which he then topped up with water before pushing the flask across the table to Sorac.
"I apologize if I've tired you with all my words today,” he said. “There's not much more I need to tell, but the last part is the most important.” He sipped from his mug. Sorac noticed that the diluted brandy had hardly been touched and he concluded that Eldrinda had only poured himself a drink so as not to seem rude by letting him drink alone.
“Erlos’ scientists don’t really understand the details, but this property of lithos to work as a conductor of vortexian energy means that lithos can be responsive to the power of thought -- to mind-waves – although one mind alone can never hope to generate waves powerful enough.
“In fact it would take the power of many millions of minds working together in the most perfect harmony – and then concentrated through what Erlos calls a triangle of power – to create a thought ray powerful enough to activate the lithos in the way intended.
"And so the main work of all Erlotians must now become the work of harmony of thought. And you will appreciate that it’s not something that a civilization like Bueloess could ever learn to do? But Bueloess needs lithos because it is the lightest of all metals.”
Eldrinda sat forward with two hands wrapped around his mug and looked enquiringly at Sorac to make sure he understood. Sorac nodded. He simply accepted what the other had to say.
“Bueloess has been building its spacecraft upon lithos for millions and millions of years,” Eldrinda continued: “Bueloess uses a lot of lithos. So Bueloess raids new worlds for lithos, and destroying those worlds by its extraction, to build more spacecraft, to raid new worlds, to build more spacecraft -- machines building machines like themselves, and better than themselves -- forever.”
An owl hooted in the dark forest. Sorac rose to put more wood on the fire. “There's more wood on the porch, when that is gone,” Eldrinda said.
"After reaching out through space for millions and millions of years Bueloess' main forces will soon start arriving here The world closest to Aelutia is named Marion. Bueloess is trying to take over Marion, to use it as a base from which to attack Erlos with missiles that Erlos will not be able to defend against, and then with Erlos out of the picture to strip Aelutia of its lithos in a savage process that will quickly kill everything that lives.
“There's no time left. Erlos has to attack Bueloess through the innerspace. Yet Erlos' Council of Seven are still tangled in the same interminable debate that they’ve been engaged in for the last twenty-five years. There’s no time left. I have to convince them. I must return to Erlos. I have to persuade them.”
Tyl bought food and they ate.
“When will you go?” the shepherd asked.
“Very soon now,” was the reply.
Their conversation lasted late into the night, until at last Sorac could no longer keep his eyes open; he rolled himself up in his blanket by the fire. Beyond the wooden walls of the house, the treetops swayed and sighed in the wind.
(end of Book One)
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Erlos continues here, with Book Two:
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