III
Wixelor, two hundred and fifty-seven years old at the time of the black stones incident, was the son of Dreamers like himself. While he was still a child, his parents made sure to filter through the dreams that flooded their minds but also their tangible reality – fleeting forms that shimmered in the dimness of their home and vanished –, so that little Wixelor would only be visited by mild, harmless and pleasurable ones, the dreams of otherworldly children or fantastic animals, some of whom Wixelor would chase around to play with, until, with a sinking of his boyish heart, he’d realize that they were nothing but illusions. This often made him feel lonely, and squatting near the edge of their island he’d make short-lived dreams of his own, in which he joined his ghostly mates in worlds of bright green fields and sunshine, amongst colourful birds and trees laden with apples red like rubies, and then they’d all sit around a great big table and eat, oh dear Gods, food, endless in abundance and variety – instead of which he had to make do, like every other child of Ienar Lin, with the wilted, bland vegetables that his mother grew in their garden and with the occasional of stale bread and petrified cheese peddled by the Boatmen, and which tasted more punishment than nourishment.
But once he was old enough to understand and accept his Gods-appointed duty, and shouldered the full weight and diversity of the dreams his frail, ageing parents could no longer bear or protect him from, Wixelor’s world became even drearier, and he would spend days or even weeks at a time lying flat on his bed and staring at the ceiling, while his mind was assailed by swarms of dreams, some of them so vividly terrifying or heartrending, he almost felt as if they were part of his own sorrowful life, and he would even forego food and water, wishing to die and thus put and end to this madness, to this ceaseless procession of agonizing fantasies, of shattered hopes and boundless fears.
And then his parents died and were lowered into the stillness of the Dark Lake, and Wixelor, having no living soul to share and relieve his bouts of desolation and heartbreak, developed, as all Linners did, a way to be able to perform his compulsory dream-sieving without losing himself entirely in its torrents: he found a specific passion of his own and nurtured it with all the strength that was left in his beleaguered mind – and like many a Linner, he chose as object of the obsession that would define him and keep him marginally stable that tantalizing bygone era before the Runes of Norien had gone missing, when Ienar Lin was a world of wonders. And at night, before sinking into the few hours of sleep he could steal between dreams, Wixelor briefly indulged in his own wild fancies, in which he escaped the Godsforsaken Eye, shooting through the Lids on the back of a flying beast such as alien dreamers rode: griffins and dragons and pegasi and gold-winged eagles, the cold wind like the breath of life on his face.
To this end he needed to delve into the Mad Sphere’s distant past, the lore and the history, the salvaged memories of that blissful time – a thing for which Wixelor was ideally equipped, since, as a Dreamer, he could enter the dreams of his fellow Linners as easily as a hand dipping into a bowl of water to retrieve the marbles lying in the bottom. Those especially precious to him were the private dreams of Rememberers, whose job was to keep fastidious records of the past; thanks to them, Wixelor had learnt all about the mythical prehistory of the Ever-Shifting Sphere and of the other two worlds that had been moulded of its original substance (Lurien, a world of fearful simpletons, and the barbaric Feerien), and, most importantly, about anything in the universe’s long past that might point to where they Eyes of the Gods had been hidden.
All in all, he mused, while gnawing on a rock-hard piece of cheese like a rodent and shooing the animal dreams – canaries chased by cats, dogs beaten by their masters – to the back of his mind, being a Dreamer was not so cruel a fate. Sure, it might fill you up with inexplicable thoughts and yearnings and snatches of magnificent realities that made life in the gloominess of the Eye seem even more unbearable, but it was better than being a Worrier and having to suffer a constant assault of anxiety and dread, or, even worse, an Ender, whose task it was to share the worst possible moment in the existence of any living thing, the pain, regret and raw panic as it felt nothingness creep up on it. Those unfortunate Linners usually ended up without a shred of self-awareness, and in time became so violently mad they often threw themselves into the Dark Lake.
And all the while, Wixelor kept his mind’s eye alert, ready to pick up even the faintest sign of the stolen Runes, or a change in the matrix of Creation that might hint at the long-disappeared Three Gods – anything that could hopefully aid him in his secret plan to not merely imagine and crave but, if possible, regain the paradise that was.
What he hadn’t expected, however, was that the first such sign would come from neither the Rememberers nor the Foreseers (whose minds were far too muddled by the deluge of innumerable and incomprehensible futures to make much sense), nor even from some tucked-away, remote part of the cosmos, but from the sister worlds of Ienar Lin: the Shperes of Toil and Untouch.
Up until then, Wixelor had been treating the dreams of Lurienites and Feeres with utter dismissiveness, deeming them little more important than those a clever ape or pig might dream. And then, early one morning, a few days after he had found the stones’ weird message, he was suddenly visited by two brutally lifelike dreams, brimming with the loud, breathless confusion of worlds on the brink of some cataclysmic event. The first concerned a pair from Lurien who were somehow linked with a change of massive proportions about to befall their calm, peaceful realm, and the second a young boy of Feerien who had suddenly and unknowingly come into the inheritance of supernatural powers that might avert the devastation intended to strike his homeworld.
And in a single moment, the black stones and the word ‘nowhere’ acquired a huge significance, being part of the omnipresent rule of three: Three Gods, Three Runes, the three realms of Norien; and now three omens, whatever they might mean.
IV
The first thing Wixelor needed to do was learn as much as possible about the nature and the provenance of the seven black stones – which, unfortunately, he couldn’t without leaving his island, for the amassed knowledge of Dreamers was notoriously unreliable, since the reality of a dream is nearly always distorted by the underlying feelings of the dreamer. For instance, even after more than two centuries on the job, Wixelor was still unsure as to whether the flying creatures that soared through strange skies in their sleep could actually fly or were merely craving the ability. Thus, in order to obtain some potentially accurate and useful information about the stones, he had to talk to one of the Naturers, whose task was to keep painstakingly detailed records on the origin, qualities and properties of anything and everything residing in the countless physical worlds.
However, this posed numerous problems, not least of which was the actual trip to another island – for Ienar Lin, after the Gods had wreaked their vengeance upon it, was a dismal place, designed for extreme and often lifelong solitude.
The Eye was indeed globular, though this wasn’t apparent from the concavity of its walls – whose size and distance was immense, like a circular horizon of impenetrable blackness – but from the Lids, two vast, sky-high plates which drew apart slowly and unpredictably, making the Mad Sphere tremble to its foundations and admitting, for as long as they remained parted, a frantically flickering view of other firmaments: endless stretches of black space studded with brilliant stars, bright blue skies across which fat white clouds chased one another, suns of searing violet setting above worlds of luscious green. And while this marvel lasted, all Linners came rushing out to stare in painful wonderment – for once the Lids closed again, the light of those beautiful worlds would vanish, plunging them in their usual gloom, with only the weak glow of candles and small fires to see by, and glimpse, in pinpoints of yellow, the existence of others.
As for the islands, they were more like mushrooms or trees: a sloping piece of black rock barely wide enough to accommodate a tiny house and garden, sitting
atop a tall thick stem that dove into the unfathomable depths of the Dark Lake – an enormous expanse of still, black water, tepid and unfresh and incapable of ever truly quenching one’s thirst, because (or so was believed) of the countless corpses rotting at its bottom, poisoning the water with lifelessness and eventually killing its drinkers.
However, if one desperately wished to visit another island, to keep company, copulate or procreate with another Linner, it was possible to do so, even though it involved a vertiginous climb down to the Dark Lake and consorting with a Boatman, neither of which were particularly desirable. And then of course one had to confront the ultimate and hardest problem: intruding into another’s private madness and – if the visitor was unwelcome or the request somehow offensive – suffering the consequences of two hostile lunatics confined to a very small space.
Yet even as he was weighing these considerations, Wixelor was suddenly seized by a dream like a vice gripping his mind: the fleeting image of a grotesque, gigantic man called Velius eviscerating a soldier with his bare hands and conveying the slippery innards to his sharp-toothed, putrid mouth – and doubling over he threw up, though this time, fortunately, without bringing up anything other than spit and bile.
And as he gradually calmed down he remembered that the monstrous cannibal, riding a strange human horse, was framed by the lilac sky and the six moons of Feerien.
There’s no time to hesitate, he told himself, and pocketing the stones he walked to the edge of his island, made sure the rope was fastened firmly to the tall sharp rock that grew out of the ground like a horn, and grabbing it with both hands he started his slow descent.
Luckily, just as he was nearing the surface of the Dark Lake, unnerved by the density of the darkness, Wixelor saw a faint orange light hovering in the distance, and watched it grow bigger as it came his way: the lantern overhanging a boat’s prow.
Praise the Gods for their puny mercies, as his mother used to say. For boatmen were indeed a mercy, and in fact, in the same way other civilizations owed their thriving to beasts of burden, so did Linners owe their meagre comforts to these dumb, unlikable men.
No one knew about their origin, or even how they had come by their boats; they had always existed, rowing across Ienar Lin and performing their task, the only one that was purely menial and didn’t involve the accumulated knowledge of the universe. What was known was that they were (again like otherworldy beasts) extremley short-lived, rarely exceeding the age of seventy, and that they carried in their boats, rummaged from the remote shores of the Dark Lake, every single object that Linners used to feed, dress and house themselves, everything that made their lives somewhat tolerable: seeds and lumber, cloth and coals, glass, matches and ossified bread. (Where all this had come from was another puzzling question; some Rememberers said that they had all been claimed by the rising waters of the Dark Lake after the Gods had exacted their punishment, and were slowly rising to the surface and washing up on the shore, while others believed they continued to arrive, even though erratically, from one or more doors into alien worlds that had grown scarce but never wholly vanished).
Be that as it may, Boatmen and their wares were essential to the Linners’ survival, and for this reason they always got what they demanded, which was invariably one of two things: either divulge what the Gods were telling them (for in their great obtuseness Boatmen thought the Gods were still not merely present but talkative), or shed a little blood, which Boatmen believed could prolong their lives.
And Wixelor, swinging on the thick knot at the end of the rope while the boat drew closer, had come prepared, carrying a vial of salted beetroot juice that could pass for blood in the dimness, because, although he didn’t know why (perhaps from the residue of syringe-related nightmares?) he had a horror of needles.
Then the boat came to a stop and floated before him, and in the lantern’s glow he made out the sorry sight of a typical Boatman: a very old and wrinkled man, bald and toothless, stinking of urine and glaring at him through the slits of his hollowed eyes, as if Wixelor was about to inflict on him some evil deception.
“What you looking to buy?” he said, his voice equally filled with suspicion.
“Nothing,” Wixelor said, still swinging to and fro. “I want you to take me to another island.”
“Well, come aboard, then; I don’t have all day!” the Boatman grunted.
Gathering momentum, Wixelor leapt and landed on the rickety boat, staggering left and right till he gained his balance and eliciting croaks of rebuke from the old man.
“Where to, then?” he said.
“Do you happen to know a Naturess named Moraxa?” Wixelor said. “She’s an extremely obese woman who lives on an island somewhere nearby.”
“One that goes about like the Gods made her?”
“That would be the one, yes.”
“Oh, sure I know her,” the Boatman said, leering. “Know her real well.” And when Wixelor’s stony face refused to acknowledge his lascivious jest his grin faded, and taking hold of the oars he began rowing.
“So,” he said after a brief silence, “any word from the Gods about the treasure?”
This was another fallacy shared by all Boatmen, and cultivated by Linners to give themselves an advantage in the bartering of goods: that the Gods had hidden some huge, mythical treasure at the bottom of the Dark Lake, a trove of untellable riches for the Boatman lucky enough to find it and dredge it up with his winch and hook.
“Still nothing, I’m afraid,” Wixelor said, shaking off the dream of a woman who was baking a cake intended for her husband, and whose secret ingredient was a hefty dose of rat poison. Why did so many people dream of killing each other? Wasn’t there sufficient killing going on while they were awake?
“So, what are you?” the Boatman said after a while.
“I’m a Dreamer,” Wixelor said, blinking a frog’s dream away.
“You’re what now?”
“A Dreamer; I collect dreams.” And when this failed to register on the old man’s scrunched-up face, he added, “Those things you see when you’re asleep?”
“Oh, that. Why, sure, I get them all the time; but what use are they?”
“The same use as that hideous mole on your forehead, I suppose,” Wixelor said, instantly defensive of his life’s work and hoping to shut up the intolerable fool.
But the Boatman’s skin must be thick as it was filthy, for after a moment or two he asked, “Ever seen what I see when I’m sleeping?”
“Something concerning the treasure, perhaps?”
“Well, yes, but that’s not all I see. I’m a man just like yourself, if you know what I mean. And there’s this one lass who buys up all the soap I can get her; goes by the name of Lanxa and she’s pretty as anything, and sometimes she comes to me in the middle of the night, in these there dreams, and she’s all naked and sweet-smelling... So, any idea on what she might be seeing when she closes her eyes? Does she ever, you know, dream of ole’ me?”
Oh dear Gods, Wixelor thought. The detestable old wretch wanted his vanity stroked! However, hoping against hope to stop the Boatman’s chattering (for his breath was where all things fragrant go to die), he invented a temptress named Byxila, ten times more gorgeous than the soap-lover, and who constantly dreamt of being ravaged by a wizened, stinking brute just like himself. But the trickery had the exact opposite result, for now the Boatman wanted to know everything about this fictitious woman, so Wixelor had to keep inventing, a process doubly arduous as he was simultaneously fighting back the grandiose and gory dream of some primitive warlord.
So, when he saw the telltale rope ladder dangling from Moraxa’s island – an easy means of access for whomever wished to partake of her enthusiastic hospitality – he stood up and leapt from the boat into the tepidness of the Dark Lake, while the Boatman called after him for ‘a wee bit of blood to spice up the old juices’. Wixelor felt not a bit of regret for deceiving the Boatman, nor any fear that he might di
scover he’d been played for a fool – for even if the scum-loving Byxila did exist, the Eye was so immense a Boatman might spend his whole life paddling around without even covering a hundredth of its vastness.
No, Wixelor, while climbing the rope ladder, was entirely focused on the greater problem at hand: how to extract the information he needed from the notorious Naturess without being driven to the very edge of his endurance.
Because Moraxa’s passion, the private purpose of her whole existence when she was not wallowing in the infinite minutiae of millions of physical worlds, was having wild, compulsive, indiscriminate sexual intercourse with any man who stepped on her island. This Wixelor knew from her dreams, which were always suffused with the feverish breathlessness of carnal excess, but also from the dreams of many a Linner who had sought her out for whatever reason and had ended up rolling on the hard black rock with a woman whose startling obesity was rendered even more fearsome by the fact that, to be able to indulge in her fixation without a moment’s loss, she never wore a stitch of clothing, plodding about like an extra-Norienic beast in heat.
Of course Moraxa was not alone in devoting all the strength she could muster in pleasing her voluptuousness. Countless Linners were similarly inclined, figuring that, since the greatest part of their lives was lost to a relentless mental preoccupation, what little time and vigour remained should be spent on things that involved solely the body and its gratification. To this end, many amongst them paid frequent short visits to one another’s islands, while others, whose lust over time bred feelings of intimacy and affection, paired up and had children whom they grew to love as real parents (though it was not unheard of to sleep with one’s child if the desire was too strong).
But to Wixelor, surrendering to the craving of the loins seemed an ill remedy, one which, instead of bringing calm and relief, burdened you with yet another master, another obsession against which you were powerless. He’d seen enough Linners’ dreams of sexual yearning to know that life in the Eye could never fulfill them. And even in the case of those mates fortunate enough to turn their frenzy into the quietude of love – his parents, for instance, who had most likely become a couple in the first place to satisfy their lust –, there still loomed another threat: that of losing your loved one – again like his parents, who had died within a week of each other; the thought of his bereft father in those agonizing days, the emptiness and desolation in his gaze, as if his own heart too lay in the depths of the Dark Lake, still brought tears to Wixelor’s eyes. Thus he had decided early on that, whenever visited by sexual hunger, he would tend to it on his own, without binding his happiness and fate to those of a stranger’s.
However, by now he’d reached the top of the ladder and his challenge lay before him; and upon seeing it Wixelor felt faint with fear and his body recoiled, as if trying to seperate itself and flee from the imminent ordeal.
For the creature who stepped out of the house – a house made neither of wood nor of bricks but of countless thick tomes filled with Nature’s infinitude –, smacking her thick purple lips as though at the arrival of some delicious meal, was far more revolting than the image Wixelor had painted to prepare himself.
Trudging on legs thick as pillars of flabby, pockmarked flesh, in front of which drooped two massive, loose-skinned udders and numerous long and grimy folds of fat, Moraxa was vileness incarnate – and this without taking into account the ravenous look on her bloated face, nor the hidden, unimaginable cleft between her thighs.
And then the horror spoke, in a deep, predatory growl. “Well, well, what have we here?” she said. “I knew I smelled a Dreamer.”
Wixelor was unwittingly backing away, but soon he found himself teetering at the edge of the sloping rock – and despite his revulsion, he couldn’t very well swim back to his island. He felt the stones in his pocket to brace himself; he must have an answer, no matter what the price.
Meanwhile Moraxa had stopped, and stood there ogling him while running her pudgy hands beneath her breasts and greedily sniffing the sweat she reeked of.
“Come on, then,” she said, “don’t be shy. I’m not gonna eat you.”
Let’s hope so, Wixelor thought, and began to undo his shirt with shaking hands.
As it turned out, mating with Moraxa wasn’t as horrible as he feared. It didn’t resemble so much sexual congress as the energetic toying of a very big animal with one of its young: he’d been tossed this way and that, pounced upon, rolled across folds of soft slippery flesh, squeezed and playfully bitten, slapped and slobbered over, and only once or twice had he felt his penis, as unresponsive to the rough play as a boneless finger, enter the moist softness of Moraxa’s mouth and genitals.
And to her credit, once it was over, the wanton Naturess – her insatiable appetite somewhat appeased – got up and proceeded to repay Wixelor’s favour by taking the black stones back to her house of books, emerging after a while with a thick stack of yellowed paper bound with string. Then she squatted on the comfortable cushion of her buttocks, and using a magnifying glass she began to srcutinize them one by one, every now and then turning to the volume to consult its densely-scribbled pages.
Then she looked up at Wixelor, who was eagerly staring at her. “You said you vomited these?” she said. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes. But why do you ask? What’s the matter?”
“Well, I suppose I could be mistaken, but the gold dust in these letters has the greenish hue of Feerien gold. As for the stones themselves, they’re made of a kind of obsidian indigenous to the volcanic layers of Mirror Mountain.”
“In Lurien?” Wixelor said, astonished. “But I thought there existed no black objects in Lurien.”
“Oh, sure they do; it’s just that Lurienites are too stupid and cowardly to cross the Mists, which they believe to be populated by man-eating monsters. Ridiculous – and I’m speaking from experience, since I’m a man-eating monster myself.”
But Wixelor had stopped listening, and so didn’t notice the desirous gleam in Moraxa’s eyes. A stone from Lurien, with traces of gold mined in Feerien, had found its way, magically, to Ienar Lin, and specifically into his stomach.
If this was not a portent, nothing was.