III
They had never felt, could never conceive of, such terror. Even when they were struggling not to drown – and hoping they wouldn’t dissolve – in the Sacred River’s milk, it had at least been a familiar terror, one they had witnessed before and which was part of the world they’d been born to.
But when, drawn by the amiable look of their reflections, they had crossed the shimmering sheet and found themselves in total darkness (for somehow Gallan had lost the glowstone he was holding), whose cold, thick air was fraught with odors they had never smelled before – when, in short, they realized that, just as their Makers had warned them years ago, by entering the Mirror Mountain they’d been expelled from Lurien forever, they instantly became as beasts, howling and beating their fists against the unseen wall of rock into which the shining threshold had disappeared.
Then they heard a voice calling, “Is anyone there?” over and over.
And although, with each repetition of the call, the voice sounded more fearful, Gallan and Raddia hushed at once, gripping each other and shuddering with fright – for who knew what the creature whose voice they heard looked like, and what harm it might be able to inflict on them?
However, the moment the creature fell silent, a faint, wavering glow appeared in the distance, and straining their ears they heard the scrape of approaching footsteps. Whatever it was, it was coming towards them, so holding back their dread they thought in unison, hoping their voices would sound somewhat commanding, Stop! Don’t come any closer! Don’t make us hurt you! Turn around and begone! Begone! BEGONE!
And for all their hopelessness the trick worked, and powerfully.
“No!” the voice called, now clearly filled with panic. “Forgive me, O most noble Seers, for disturbing your peace! Don’t drive me mad! Spare this humblest of wrecthes!”
So Gallan and Raddia advanced, slowly at first, and then, sensing the fierceness of the creature’s fear in the muddle of its thoughts, with growing confidence.
It was a man, down on his knees, with his head touching the floor of the cave and his hands crossed before him. Next to him stood a plain lamp, shedding yellow light. From what little they could see, he didn’t appear either monstrous or much different from any grown Lurienite, except from his hair and garments, which were both the same deep uncolour, and the fact that he wore no gloves.
Looking at his bent, shaking body Raddia felt almost sorry for him.
Don’t fear, she said. We mean no harm.
But the man shrieked again, curling up into an even smaller ball and imploring them to take pity on his misery and spare his poor, frail, stupid mind.
It was their mind’s voice that terrified him so, the way their words reached him without their opening their mouth; so as well as pitiful and frightened he was primitive.
“Fear not,” she said. “We shan’t hurt you. Stand up so we can see each other.”
Still shaking and heaving with sobs of fear, the man obeyed. He was as big and tall as they; his skin was dark, as were his gleaming eyes, but other than that his features were those of a regular face, if one contorted by horror. Did they perhaps, and their own pure whiteness, seem hideous to him? Was that why he bowed his head so deeply?
“Thank you, O most majestic Oracles...” he muttered near inaudibly. “May the Spirits whose eminent agents you are, show equal lenience to my fellow Feeres.”
Gallan and Raddia stared at him blankly; so many strange words! What could he possibly mean? But when, mistaking their silence for displeasure, he went on, calling them glorious Seers and mighty Oracles and Emissaries of the Spirits, Gallan raised his hand, a gesture that made the man fall silent at once, and bow his head till his chin touched his chest.
“We know not of the things you speak of,” he said in a level, non-threatening voice. “We are neither noble nor glorious – far from it; we are but outcasts of our world, a pair of Mates not pure enough to become Makers.”
The man raised his head a bit, a frown of puzzlement creasing his brow, but then resumed his air of servility, saying, “Be that as it may, please know that you shall always have the gratitude of your most humble servant, Veig Treth.”
“You have two names?” Raddia said. “Why is that?”
Again a look of bafflement rippled across the man’s face, and there was disbelief in his glance. “Because,” he said, “one name was given me by my mother, and the other by my father. Does that – appear odd to you? Is it not the same in your... world?”
“No,” Gallan said. “Lurienites have but one name, which they utter themselves at the time of their Surfacing. I am Gallan, and this is my Mate, Raddia.”
“And our Makers, in turn, were Lorn and Navva. They died,” Raddia said.
This time the twice-named man’s bewilderment was so great, he raised his head, stared at them, and with trembling lips, as if he were afraid of offending them he asked, “Forgive my denseness but – you mean to say you’re Mates born to the same Makers?”
“Yes,” Gallan said. “This has been the way of our realm forever.”
Veig Treth stared at them some more, and then, lowering his head, he buried his face in his hands – in sadness? disappointment? Raddia listened to his thoughts.
“What is a bloody inbred?” she said.
What a strange world this Feerien was!
When they made their timid way to the mouth of the Cave, where Veig Treth awaited them holding his lamp, and stepping out they saw the abyss of uncolour gaping as far as the eye could see, Gallan and Raddia were too fearful to proceed – but after they explained the cause for their reluctance to Veig Treth, he laughed heartily and told them that the thing they’d lived in dread of, thinking it a sign of grave impurity, was in fact a colour among many, named black, which, besides being prevalent in all of Feerien, was completely harmless to see and touch. And recalling the fruits they had consumed beyond the Mists, and the dark-furred animal’s kindness, Raddia first and then Gallan took a few more steps, gazed at the black sky that was scattered with shiny specks called stars, and removing their gloves they touched the black rock – and nothing happened to their Substance. This might be a world of touch but it wasn’t deadly, at least not immediately.
So down the slope they followed Veig Treth and the light of his lamp, and once on level ground they heard a soft breath and saw, emerging from the midst of trees and bushes, another strange beast, tall and black (how quickly had their fear of the uncolour dwindled once it’d been given a proper name!) and instantly submissive to their presence – for the moment it saw them, the animal went down on its forelegs, waiting for them to climb on its back, as Veig Treth explained. And so they did, and although when the beast stood up they were afraid, they could feel in its every breath and movement that it was a gentle creature, whose only wish was to carry them safely ahead. It was called a horse, (and also a mare, which meant it was female) and after they’d been bumping up and down on her back for a while, with Veig Treth rushing and panting in their wake, they began to enjoy the ride so greatly they briefly forgot they were aliens in an alien world.
Though before long they had to check their enjoyment, for poor Veig Treth had fallen behind and was breathlessly calling at them to stop, wait for him; and no sooner had Gallan taken hold of the horse’s – reins? – that the kindly creature halted with a shake of her handsome head. There was no room for all of them to ride together, so they agreed to continue on foot, all the while showering Veig Treth with questions. There were so many things they knew nothing about, so many new peculiar words to try their minds and mouths around! It was as if they were little again, listening to this man of Feerien, whose manner towards them had changed quite a bit since they had met in the Cave, and was now reminiscent of Navva’s air of impatience and disappointment, as if he, too, had been expecting more and better of them.
They’d feel horribly ignorant and ashamed of how little they knew, if this fresh knowledge weren’t so utterly fascinating. Fo
r instance, as Veig Treth told them in a weary voice, they weren’t – and should never be – Mates, for they were siblings, brother and sister, and to have bred would have been an appalling sin, which meant that their unwillingness to merge Substances, unthinkable by the values of Lurien, was in fact a great virtue called morality. (Gallan and Raddia had some trouble grasping the precise meaning of vague concepts like this, but what they didn’t get from their guide’s words they gleaned from the unspoken wealth of his thoughts, which they delved in very gently so as not to disturb his mind). But there were also as many, if not more, childishly simple words and things, which Veig Treth had a hard time explaining to them without grinning or bursting into outright laughter of derision. Surely they jest! They didn’t know what water was? Or a gold coin engraved with the likeness of a king wearing a crown? And did they really believe that to have normal, coloured eyes, was a sign of impurity?
Yet their respective realms were not without their similarities, which grew even more pronounced as the three of them conversed about the grave misfortunes that had recently befallen them, and the doom they might be heralding. Apparently, just like the surge of fruitless matings and suicides that had afflicted Lurien, disturbing the natural circle of life and death and raising questions as to the purity of the Mates’ Substance and even that of the Sacred River, so had Feerien been plagued by this Shy Death, whose growth and advance posed an equal threat to the survival of the Feeres. Moreover, these ill omens were thought to be ushering greater calamities, if not the complete destruction of both Spheres: Lurien’s sky had already been invaded by that spreading black hole, while the people of Feerien dreaded the reappearance of something called Seventh Moon, which could obliterate every living thing once and for all. At that point their discourse strayed to the subject of higher powers, beings capable of creating worlds and tearing them asunder at will. Gallan and Raddia suggested the legend of the Ghosts, but Veig Treth dismissed it with a wave of his hand, (“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” he said) and as they sat down in a clearing for a brief repose, he told them about these almighty Spirits, Whose supreme Servant he was, and how, despite the believers’ earnest prayers, They seemed to have withdrawn Their grace, and abandoned them to the mercy of an army of deplorable brutes called Scavengers.
These sounded a lot like Faults, so Gallan told Veig Treth – or High Servant, as he clearly preferred to be called – about the one that had murdered their Maker (father) Lorn, and how easy it had been to bend his lesser Substance with their own.
“Really?” said he, though it wasn’t so much a question as an expression, his first since they’d met, of admiration, coupled with an underlying motive that Raddia picked up behind the sparkle of interest (or self-interest) in his eyes. If this is true, he thought, and they can do the same with those revolting savages, I might win my way back into the King’s good graces. These two might be dim as the night, but they might prove useful after all.
Raddia was indignant, and would very much like to cut into the High Servant’s thoughts in a loud mind voice to recall to him of their vast superiority, but instead she and Gallan were suddenly offered a chance to give their guide a display he wouldn’t soon forget – for while they sat, each one immersed in their own musings, a dark shape pounced at them from behind a shrub, causing Veig Treth to shriek and jump for cover behind them.
Their ambusher was a short, hairy, stinking man, naked but for a grimy loincloth despite the chill, and he growled at them, baring his black rotten teeth like an animal ready to attack, while in his raised right hand he brandished a bone sharpened into a blade.
And then in a single leap he was upon them, swiping his weapon at them and forcing them to recoil until they backed up against a tree. Gallan and Raddia tried to make this obviously primitive foe yield to their combined Substance, mind-shouting commands at him, but it was hard to aim their counterattack when at the same time they were struggling to avoid having their throats slashed by the frenzied swingings of the blade. But it wasn’t merely the element of surprise and fear that had unnerved them and robbed them of their power, but the knowledge, certain as something they could touch and weigh, that this filthy creature’s Substance was far stronger and more dangerous than those of ten Faults put together.
And as they writhed and wrestled, the beast-like warrior, while trying to twist Raddia’s forearm, pulled off her left glove, glanced at it momentarily, and then threw it away, to land on a bed of dead leaves where it became instantly white. But that moment had been enough for Raddia to strike back. In a swift single motion, she peeled off her right glove as well, shot her arm and grabbed the much shorter man by the throat; she had no clear concept of what she was about to do except maybe shove him away, but to get better purchase she pressed against the tree’s gnarly bark with her bare right hand.
Then something extraordinary happened, taking them all by surprise. Suddenly, Raddia felt a flow of great strength but even greater peace fill her up; she felt rigid and immovable – almost eternal. So overwhelming was this feeling, she failed to notice what was happening to the assailant she was still choking, nor had she the presence of mind to realize that what coursed through her was the massive Substance of the ancient oak.
When she came to, as if from a powerful dark folly (because dream, Veig Treth’s suggested word, seemed hardly adequate to describe the experience), all three of them were standing above the Scavenger’s corpse – though this wasn’t the appropriate word either, for what lay on the ground resembled neither a dead man nor anything anyone of them had ever seen. His skin had turned into a dark, rough bark, a mass of leaves had sprouted all over his face, and his limbs had been hardened into firm, twisted roots.
Raddia’s touch had transformed him into a tree.
After that incident, the High Servant grew fearful of them, allowing the horse to carry them off as fast as she saw fit while purposely keeping a distance from them.
In a way, it was to be expected that he should be wary of them; Gallan, and even Raddia herself, had also been shaken by the manifestation of a power they had never imagined they possessed. If anything, during their last days in Lurien, they’d been told in more ways than one that their Substance was weak, so weak it could produce neither Mate nor Fault. Could it be that in this world they were stronger? Or was the Substance of the tree the sole force responsible for the vile man’s transformation?
Yet if this was so, wouldn’t Raddia too have become a stiff corpse of wood and leaves? No – on the conrtary, during those amazing moments she had felt stronger than ever, her will to cause harm, as sure and lethal as the warrior’s weapon, rushing through her arm and shooting off her fingers in a dazzle of exquisite emotion.
However, as they silently went over the event, they both agreed that Raddia’s feat, even if achievable by Gallan as well, would hardly suffice to keep at bay an army of men as physically strong and determined as the one who had nearly undone them.
And the High Servant was thinking the same thought exactly, and privately – or so he believed, for although he kept lagging behind, Gallan and Raddia were delicately probing the fever of his mind, their presence felt only as a slight ache in the back of his head. And if they had been somewhat inclined to dislike the man before, because of his haughty manner, what they learnt now from his hidden self made him seem utterly detestable.
First of all, he was clearly intending to present them as a pair of prize beasts he had captured thanks to his great wits and bravery, in order for Fazen – the King, a man whom all Feeres seemed to regard as their leader and protector, even though he did nothing at all to defend them from the Scavengers – to restore him to his former state of prosperity; and this regardless of how many people must starve so that he, Veig Treth, could stuff himself, and despite the fact that he held the Spirits he supposedly served in the same indifference and disdain he reserved for anyone other than himself.
Then these putrid thoughts were succeeded by an even more appalling sche
me, wherein the High Servant had Raddia reduce the King into a lifeless effigy of stone, from whose head Veig Treth removed the crown and placed it upon his own. And once he became Supreme Ruler of Feerien, he could strike a deal with the Scavengers, offering, along with the throne, as much wealth and as many slaves and whores as their hearts desired, so long as they allowed him to live out the rest of his days in comfort.
He was an evil, dangerous man, and Gallan had a good mind to prod the horse to break into a run, leaving him to fend for his own – but at that very moment they heard a soft rustle from somewhere nearby, and turning towards the sound they saw something that was at once so strange and familiar, it was as though a part of Lurien, which they’d only begun to accept as lost to them forever, had somehow trailed them to this place.
It was a rosy-red glow, which they both instantly knew came neither from those stars up there nor from a fire, but from the inside of an extremely powerful being.
The last time they’d beheld this formidable sight had been long ago, when they were still children in pursuit of childish mischief. They were supposed to be at bed after their midday repast, a practice they always fervently bemoaned, for having their bellies full only made them more lively and playful than before. But while they sat in the dark, making up nasty rhymes about their Makers, there came from the kitchen a snore loud enough to bring the roof down – for Lorn, who was supposedly keeping an eye on them while Navva went about the rest of her daily chores, had dozed off in his chair.
They could hardly deny themselves such an opportunity, so mere moments later they were sneaking out the back of their Makers’ home, which was partly concealed by a handful of trees and which led, through a secret path amongst more and shadier trees, to a bend of the Sacred River a dozen houses or so away from their own – a place special and thrilling for being within view of the Domicile.
Now the Domicile, and the Sages of the Circle within it, had been forever the object of terrifying desire and extravagant bragging amongst young Lurienites. One of the games they played, whenever they could elude for a while their Makers’ attention, was daring one another to get as close to the circular building as possible, before losing their nerve and bolting back in a state of sweet panic, as if hunted by Fear itself. But the older children went further than that, and in their games, which required far greater courage, some of them actually entered the Domicile – or claimed so afterwards, since most times seeing someone cross the dreaded threshold sent the rest of the teasers running, lest they be linked to a transgression so unthinkable that even Makers with a matter demanding the Circle’s wisdom avoided the task if it could be avoided. And from these acts of self-proclaimed valour were born countless myths about what might – or had already – become of foolhardy trespassers.
According to the most popular story, the Sages, owing to their supremely pure and noble Substance, gave off such a blidning light, that to come upon them uninvited was to lose your sight forever. Another version claimed that intruders were punished by losing their mind, and yet another that the Sages made them grow instantly old and fit to be submerged, while some said that Faults didn’t surface this way but became thus after having accidentally entered the Domicile when they were too little to know better.
Gallan and Raddia knew all these tales, and believed each and every one of them, overlooking the obvious question – namely, that if such horrible things did occur, why wasn’t Lurien crawling with blind people, madmen and Faults? But it is in the nature of a child to choose an exciting lie over the tedium of truth.
So on that day, while they hid behind a shrub and gazed at the Domicile through its branches, their fear was as deep as it was delightful. Casting their mind’s ear about, they heard no talk – there was no one around, a thing not surprising, for Makers never came near this place if they could help it. Of course, it would be better if there were more young Mates to dare and egg on, or to witness their bold act (the precise goal of which they were still uncertain of themselves) and be able to attest to it later on.
Yet the temptation was too great, pulling them towards the abode of the Sages like a physical force, an inner wind carrying their steps away before they had the time to grow too scared and reconsider. Dashing hand-in-hand, eyes darting here and there, they crossed the expanse of waist-high grass and weeds – for no one dared bring their sheep and cattle to graze there, to a place so charged with fear that possibly the beasts themselves wouldn’t pasture – they reached the side of the Domicile, and with their backs against the smooth, cold, curving wall they quickly stole to the entrance.
The mere fact that this building, the greatest of Lurien, had no door or gate, but stood as though accessible to anyone brave enough to penetrate the gloom awaiting on the other side of the arched ingress, was petrifying in itself – and so for a moment, the longest of their young lives, Gallan and Raddia had been glancing at each other, trying to decide if they should proceed (and possibly rue the day forever), or turn around and keep running till they were in the safety of their bedroom (and afterwards regret this moment of cowardice, when they had come so close!). Moreover, they both thought, by this time the Sages had most certainly become aware of their presence, and so they could either run away and risk unknown and potentially horrible repercussions, or just step inside and humbly beg the Circle’s forgiveness for their grave audacity.
And so they crossed the arch, shaking all over, and the darkness that greeted them was so thick they briefly panicked, thinking they had been blinded as the stories said. But then, as they fumbled along, a faint red light appeared in the distance, and then another next to it, and suddenly, like candles lit by a breath of fiery wind, there stood around them a circle of glowing spheres, which then grew into elongated columns of transparent redness, each one emitted by, and enclosing, an unmoving, unblinking Sage.
Their escape had taken place in such a state of mind-numbing terror, that the next thing they knew they were back in their beds, panting and shivering despite the mildness of the weather. It was all they could do not to wake the still-snoring Lorn and ask to be held like babes, and as for Navva, she was never quite convinced that the fear they struggled to contain was caused by being chased by a big, ugly Fault.
So, Where is that light coming from? Raddia asked of Gallan, but before he could answer, while Veig Treth (who had come running after them the moment he saw the red glow) feigned fearlessness, and poorly, a little boy sprang from a bush and stood before them, gazing at them with wide-open eyes – a gaze they couldn’t return, for the globe of light surrounding the boy was so bright, it was bedazzling.