The Runes of Norien

By the time they joined Wixelor at the shore, the fifth moon had already set and the sixth was waning, shedding the last of its lilac light on the melancholy gathering.

  Gallan and Raddia, although the whiteness of their faces and the transparence of their eyes did not betray it, were in fact terrified by the immensity of the sea, and by the prospect of not only crossing it by air but actually landing on an island in its midst – an island, furthermore, that rose and sank entirely unpredictably, and which would take them (if not to the bottom of the sea) to an even less familiar place at the other end of the world. Their simple, sheltered life in Lurien had hardly prepared them for such daring feats, and not for the first time they both longed for the uneventfulness of that old life, which seemed so distant even though it was less than a week ago that they’d been just another pair of placid Mates, drudging through their destiny as if it were a long, bland meal.

  Yodren was equally distressed, for in the past few hours he’d been subjected to so many, intense and upsetting emotions, he felt his very heart groan under their weight. First he had struggled in vain with his father, begging Yern to reconsider and come with them – because, no matter how hard he tried to drive the thought from his mind, he, too feared that they were never coming back, and that Feerien, with winter and the new year drawing near, would be swept away by a Second Disaster. But, “You have to go!” Yern had insisted. “You can read the language of the Spirits, boy – of the Gods! How are they to make way in a world whose people might speak as the ancients?” And even if he wasn’t wholly convinced of his own usefulness, Yodren couldn’t leave his little brother alone, invincible hero though he was. And as if all these worries weren’t enough, while he was in his cell, packing the bare necessities for the journey (which frightened him as it would any man), Harfien Griff had come knocking at his door – to offer his farewell, Yodren thought. But instead, the always restrained and undramatic Divinator had caught him by surprise, falling to the floor at his feet, burying his face in the hem of his robes and soaking it with a stream of tears, while Yodren, stunned and appalled, could do nothing but stand there and wish this outburst over, for despite his mortification he hadn’t the heart to pull from, or push away, this pathetic bundle of human misery. And just as his sobbing and heaving was becoming truly unbearable, Harfien had suddenly leapt to his feet and run away without a word, the choke of his grief trailing off.

  However, of them all, it was Wixelor who felt the greatest foreboding at their imminent voyage to another plane of reality – for as he waited for them to make the trip around the Castle which would take them to the seashore, his mind, blessedly idle ever since he’d left the Eye, was suddenly gripped by a dream suffused with dread.

  And even more unnerving than the usual elements of nightmares he’d learnt to endure, – which almost always contained at least one person the dreamer perceived as a foe or a fiend, some monster reflecting the suppressed fear of his or her life, left to roam free during sleep – was the fact that this dream was an image of utter lifelessness.

  Whereas Wixelor’s actual surroundings overflowed with colour, the place that had seized his mind’s eye was the essence of greyness and gloominess: an oppressively ashen sky spreading above a field where only dead, gnarly trees and skeletons of thorny bushes stood. Even the air felt dead, for no breath of wind stirred the dry leaves rotting on the ground amongst pools of black, stagnant water and mounds of an equally dark sort of mud or slush – its origin explained when, looking up, Wixelor (or the dreamer) noticed a slow yet steady snowing of some jet-black stuff he recognized to his terror as flakes of soot: as if the sky had been consumed by fire and then burnt out.

  He’d come to shaken and alarmed, blinking the awful vision away – and then it occurred to him that this disturbing dream, so unlike anything he’d seen before, could have been dreamt by an inhabitant of Erat Rin, who had witnessed the devastation they were now too late to, and could no longer, avert. What if they were about to cross over to a dead or dying world, and meet their own end from lack of living matter to support them? Of course he might be wrong (and passionately wished so), and there was also a paradox in his reasoning – for the existence of just this one dreamer surely meant that the destruction of the Runes and the End of All Things hadn’t happened yet.

  And then he turned and saw the company approaching, and tried as best and fast he could to drown the jarring memory of the greyish nightmare in the depths of other thoughts and concerns, lest Gallan and Raddia, already looking numb with fear, pick up on it and panic. As for his face, which he knew not how to control (centuries of solitude can do that to you, when there’s no one around to protect by concealing your anxiety), luckily it was too high for the others to observe comfortably and at length.

  The boarding of all five of them on the flying machine was also a stroke of luck, for the clumsiness it entailed offered them some much-needed levity. First they had to explain to Yonfi that he wasn’t big enough to drive the machine – while the boy swore up and down that since yesterday he’d grown a head taller, if not more – and then they began trying various seating arrangements, many of which ended up with someone face down in the still-warm sand. It was Yern who finally came up with the best possible solution, since, in his many years as a wandering Farmer peddling produce and animals, he’d learnt how best to make them fit in his cramped and creaky cart.

  Thus Wixelor sat in the middle of the seat, with Gallan and Raddia on his sides, half sitting and half holding onto the machine’s wooden frame, while Yodren crouched between Wixelor’s huge bony legs with Yonfi curled up in his arms, still leaving room enough for his feet to turn the pedals. And then it was really time to go, because with the darkening of the sky and the mist that hang in the horizon, veiling the Drowning Isles, they would have to be able to see, and be quick – and hopefully lucky.

  Yonfi’s shrieks of delight erupted the moment the blades began their noisy whir, and then drowned them out, squealing, “Look, Papa, look! I’m flying!”

  However, what Yern had glimpsed before the machine rose too high and turned its rear to him, was not merely the smiling faces of his sons as they waved him goodbye, but also, in Wixelor’s mild, compassionate gaze, his fleeting though rapturous dream: the whole Kobold family, once more together, happy as can be.