They set off around noon, after waking to the much-needed warmth of the fire Iabi had built early on, made even more delightful to the senses by the fragrance of a hot beverage he was brewing: a thick, spicy, richly-scented drink made from a flower’s dried tuber. “One has to be resourceful when there’s not a single grain of wheat for months,” Iabi chuckled to Yodren, gesturing them to wait a bit lest they scald their tongues.
With Iabi, Yodren and Yonfi leading the way on one camel and the rest of them following atop the other, they rode in silence and with heads bowed, for the desert wind blew puffs of stinging sand against their faces. However, they were all musing on Iabi’s tale of disaster and hope, whose explanation, in light of what they knew, was horribly simple: the Runes of Death and Life had struck Erat Rin in close succession, (hurled by their respective Gods for some unfathomable reason? cast like dice by the God of Fate and Chance in a spirit of divinely playful indifference the human mind couldn’t bear to think of?), bringing the Forgotten Sphere to the brink of complete destruction only to save part of it and leave its people to fight their own painful way towards rebirth. It would be far more preferable to think of the God of Life intervening at the last moment to undo the evil of Its Sibling, but all of them – even Yonfi, in all his innocence – knew that life could be just as cruel as death. As to their hopes, they were all fixed on Royen’s gift of resurrection, although they couldn’t help fearing that to restore one of the actual Runes of Norien might prove quite harder than to raise the puny dead.
And as they rode, now and then they all raised their eyes to the clouded heavens, yearning for some sign of this wonderful, warmth- and life-giving sun. But if there was light behind that lid of fluctuating greyness, it seemed as powerless to break through as a baby bird that hungers for the world outside the egg its soft beak cannot pierce. Yonfi could actually remember such a scene from their chicken coop in the Farmlands, where he’d been to feed the hens while one of them was hatching her eggs; she was ruffling her feathers as the movement beneath her increased and the first muffled peeps were heard, uttered by the litter of chicks that soon squirmed free from the nest, adorable little balls of yellowish fluff Yonfi couldn’t help snatching and holding inside his cupped hands. But then his eyes had strayed back to their mother, who had stepped outside the nest as well, and was pecking hectically at a single light brown egg that was still intact despite the clear movement within. For a terrible moment Yonfi had thought the hen was about to eat her lastborn chick, but then he realized she was in fact trying to help it come out of the egg, which, to their mutual relief, she’d managed shortly thereafter. Yet thinking of the whole – rather insignificant – incident now, suddenly filled him with an unbearable longing for his mother, and the reality of her absence struck him for the first time as something potentially irreversible. And so, as he had done before, he turned and cast a baleful look at Raddia, a look containing all the pain of his motherlessness.
But as luck would have it, this was one of the few times during which Raddia’s eyes weren’t lovingly trained on Yonfi, because for a while she’d been engaged, with her brother and Wixelor, in a silent conversation regarding the Runes.
For as soon as he’d climbed behind the hump, his feet hanging almost as low as the ground, his puzzling dream was so prominent in his thoughts, Gallan had grasped it as quickly and surely as if it were a fretful insect buzzing inside his own mind.
And you’re certain she’s from the future? This world’s future?
“That was how it felt,” Wixelor said; as a former inhabitant of the Mad Sphere, he wasn’t thrilled by the sound of urgent voices in his head, but Gallan was too wound up to be placated into normal speech. “Judging from the elegance of her clothes and her surroundings, her civilization must lie quite a few centuries in the future.” To which he maliciously added, Compared to it, Lurien and Feerien seem as primitive as beast’s lairs.
Raddia turned around and smiled apologetically. “So Erat Rin is saved?”
“I suppose so,” Wixelor said. “Although in her dream she was thinking – ”
Of a small, evil thing, yes, Gallan cut in, his back still facing them. But are you sure it was the Rune of Death? Because from what it sounds like, it must be anything but small.
Perhaps it was fractured in the collision, Wixelor replied, tiredly giving in.
But why now? I mean, it has to bear some significance to this quest.
It doesn’t work like that; I don’t choose what I dream. Dreams just come to me.
For a while Gallan and Raddia shut their minds to him, most likely pondering this distant future. From his long experience, Wixelor thought he knew the reason for this abrupt silence. Human beings, regardless of what world they hailed from, almost never dreamt of the future; for one thing, it was hard to imagine; and for another, the thought of a world in which they wouldn’t be alive wasn’t particularly appealing.
“And what did this woman look like?” Raddia asked. “Did she resemble Iabi?”
To his surprise, Wixelor found he couldn’t recall straight away; the ominously obsessive subject of her dream had superimposed itself on the woman’s face like a dark veil – but he remembered her still, slender hands were much whiter than Iabi’s.
As white as we are? Gallan asked, so perplexed he actually turned around.
I don’t think so, but the colour of her skin was decidedly light; oh, and she had blond hair.
Maybe there are other tribes of Oblivians who differ from Dwanars, Raddia ventured.
The important thing is that Erat Rin will still exist for many a year to come – thousands of years from now, possibly, Wixelor said, hoping to bring the discussion to a close.
We can’t be sure of that yet, Gallan said grimly. It all depends on the boy.
Now it was Raddia’s turn to be indignant – like a real mother, who cannot abide a slight on her son. “I trust Yonfi completely,” she said. “I know he can do this.”
Wixelor liked to think so, too; the possibility of Yonfi’s failure influencing the future of the Forgotten Sphere to the point of annulling it altogether hadn’t occurred to him till now, and it was dreadful. So, “After all, he is Royen the Eternal,” he said.
But it was clear that Gallan – facing away and falling silent – was doubtful.