Chapter VI:
Discourses
The Golden Woods
North of Ilvas was a land dominated by the unknown. Goblins lived in this region, but they were for the most part a timid breed, avoiding the habitations of men. Even in summer the air was crisp and cold, and in winter the whole land seemed to freeze solid. As the survivors of Esluna and their strange new companion made their way north it was not an uncommon sight to see snow upon the ground, as if the winter had forgotten to release the land from its spell as it departed.
The trees that grew to the north of Ilvas were mostly of a kind unknown to Tel Arie. They had thick ruddy trunks and bright green leaves, the buds of which, however, were a deep yellow. For this reason the woods of the north were called, among those who dared to travel beyond the Goblin Wall, the Golden Woods.
It was under the leaves of these trees that the survivors now traveled. Nonix led the way northward, stopping to rest once every hour. There were no paths in that land, and it was impossible to tell how long they would be traveling through the woods. 'Do you hunt?' Nonix asked when they stopped for a rest just before the evening. 'I am afraid we lost most of our provisions when we fled from the god-hunters.'
'I have hunted before,' Candor said honestly, although most of his prey had been human and not animal.
Nonix sighed. 'We may need to hunt if we do not find this camp. Even if we do find it,' he corrected himself, 'we may need to hunt.'
Leai looked uneasy at the thought of hunting, but Nonix paid it little mind.
'We cannot be sure that we will find welcome among these outcasts,' Nonix said. 'We are outcasts ourselves, but that does not mean that they will be friendly any more than it means that Lord Pelas and Agonas will be be friendly simply because they are both elves.'
'I can hunt - an animal, if need requires it,' Candor said, trying to conceal how unnatural he had sounded when he added the words 'an animal' to his response.
'That is very good,' Nonix said, his voice revealing his weariness. 'I am afraid that I do not have the joints for hunting any more. If my knees did not buckle, they would surely creak, and frighten my prey.'
They marched on well into the twilight, stopping to camp only after Nonix nearly tripped down a steep slope into a little valley. 'It is too dark,' he said, panting as Candor pulled him to his feet. 'We will search for this camp on the morrow.'
They made camp and ate a meager meal of stale bread. Leai offered Candor a piece of cheese, but the Black Adder refused it, saying that he had provisions of his own. In truth he did not want her to go hungry for his sake. 'Poison,' he thought to himself once again. If he was going to kill her, it would be foolish to let her consume food he might need.
'What did the god-hunters do to your people?' Leai asked him when the dark night had fully overtaken them. Nonix lay staring at the stars for a few moments before sleep overtook his tired body.
'They did nothing to my people,' Candor said shortly.
'But you slew them so mercilessly,' she pressed him, 'surely they must have wronged you in some manner.'
'I slew them because they stole something from me. I stole it back while I was in Ilvas, but I will not lose it again.' He could not imagine what had come over him to make him say even that much of his mission aloud.
Nonix, apparently not quite asleep, stirred slightly, and raised himself upon one elbow, sternly asking, 'Who are your people? They must be from Sunlan, since the god-hunters do not invade people in Ilvas without the leave of Lord Dalta.'
'My people are a small people; we live very far from here,' Candor answered, lying about the number of his race, but speaking the truth about their distance from Ilvas.
'But what would they steal? They burned everything in Esluna,' Leai said. 'They left the gold to be looted by strangers and wanderers. They kill people; they do not care for treasures.'
'The only thing that the god-hunters are said to collect are scrolls and books,' Nonix explained.
Candor's face held no expression, by which Nonix could tell that he was once again uneasy.
'Do your people have many gods?' Leai asked him. 'Nonix told me that the god-hunters destroyed Esluna because we pray to the gods of Sunlan, and to Evnai the Mother.'
'No,' Candor said plainly.
'Then you are of the Essenes,' she said, nodding at her guess as if it were the only remaining possibility.
'I am not,' Candor said, suddenly realizing that a better course would have been to pretend that her guess was correct. But there was something in her eyes that made it difficult for him to lie. 'I am not of the Essenes.'
'But who else has only one god?' Leai asked.
Nonix seemed to have fallen asleep again, and she sat in silence, puzzled by what their new companion had said.
'My home was founded by a prophet named Lapu,' Candor explained, speaking vaguely of Lapulia's history - against his better judgment. 'He told ten-thousand men that the Dragon Thaeton was coming to unmake the world, and that they must bring him a virgin every day to be sacrificed in order to save themselves and the world.
'This madman reigned for sixty years, and left behind him an elaborate religion with priests and scriptures and gods and goddesses. But when he died there was found an old copy of his writings, and upon one passage where the scriptures said, 'The gods sang to the stars,' his old copy read, 'The gods sang to the waters of the sea.'
Leai looked at him in confusion.
'Did the gods correct, not only his papers, but the history of the world as well? Did they sing to the stars or to the waters, and which did they inspire him to write?'
Leai did not know what to think of what he was saying.
Nonix opened his eyes slightly, but remained silent.
Candor continued, 'So much blood,' he said with a pause. So many lives ruined, all for this mad man's whims. His doctrines were banned, his teachings forbidden, but his books were not burned.' Candor lay great emphasis on those last words. 'They were put in a shrine where every man, woman or child could see them, and see how he altered his scriptures, thus proving himself to be a false prophet.'
'What god, then, do you serve, if your people abandoned this false teacher?' Leai asked innocently.
'We serve no gods,' he said quietly.
Nonix stirred slightly, apparently readying himself for combat, should the circumstance require it.
Candor did not move; he knew that he had nothing to fear from the old man.
'You are one of the god-hunters, then?' Leai asked in horror, clutching at the front of her dress as though she might need it for a shield. In her beautiful eyes was complete bewilderment. She had heard of no one save for the god-hunters who forbid people the worship of gods.
'In my home, perhaps,' Candor said honestly, 'I might be called upon to oppose the so-called messengers of the gods. But I am not home; I have come here for another reason, and I have no interest in these god-hunters, nor with the religions of Bel Albor.'
The disgust he saw in her eyes cut him to the heart, and he hated himself for his weakness. 'She knows nothing of the world and of the horrors that such madmen can bring,' he thought to himself.
'How, then,' Leai asked him, 'was the world created?'
'It was created the same way everything else is created; by those causes that precede them. Our Star-' Candor stopped himself suddenly. Mentioning the Star-Seers, even to a Lapulian, was a crime worthy of death. 'We have men who have made calculations,' he said dryly.
'Calculations?' Nonix laughed, easing his tired body back to the ground.
'They have some idea about how the world came to be such as it is, and we have no reason to doubt them. Everything can be reduced to the materials of the world, and everything can be made from them. The gods also, can be explained, such as they are. Fancy, lust, dreams and ale - these are the four grandparents of the gods and goddesses of Tel-' he stopped himself suddenly. 'of Bel Albor.'
'Well I think that is a horrible way to see
things,' Leai said, very obviously disturbed by what she was hearing. 'Why don't you kill us, then, and do the world a favor? Or perhaps you are going to wait until you reach the camp and kill all the mad fanatics.'
'I did not come here to kill them,' Candor said sternly, though he would kill them - all of them - if he needed. He would even kill Leai and Nonix if the need arose. At it stood, however, he was not sure that there would be anyone for him to kill in the end. If Loyal was still living, then he would have sent word to Lapulia by now; and if the Black Adder who guarded the Star Seer were slain, then there would be nothing to save the Seer from a very quick death. Surely, if any man happened upon one of those sorry creatures he would be driven to murder him as much out of pity as out of fear.
Leai laid herself down to sleep, not sure whether she was truly safe with this stranger, whether he had saved them or not.
Candor watched the fire, wrestling within himself between his compassion for the girl and with his mission. He knew which motive would win in the end, if circumstances required it.
Death Shall Fail
'Who do these sorry souls go to meet in the North?' Death asked, standing unseen in the air above their campsite, his black robes motionless despite a brisk wind that blew through the forest rustling the trees.
His brother Folly sat upon a tree branch nearby, though he might just as easily have stood upon the air with his dark sibling. 'They go to meet him; he who will give his name to the Nameless.'
'You speak of the Hidden Name?' Sleep asked from far below. He stood upon the ground beside the sleepers, gently laying their tired eyes to rest. Candor resisted him for a time, but in the end he relented, and lay himself down to an uneasy rest. Sleep, however, remained in the camp, speaking up into the trees to his brothers without lifting his eyes or raising his voice. In truth, he could have been in Kharku and they would have heard him all the same. And, of course, in some sense he was indeed also in Kharku.
'The Hidden Name?' Death said, only the slightest hint of uncertainty in his voice.
'It is the time,' Folly answered. 'It is time for your cold steel blade to fail, brother!' Folly gloated.
'There shall come a day, brother,' Death said coldly, 'when your own power shall fail as well.'
'And in that day shall the world, properly so called, fail altogether,' Folly answered. 'For Folly is the root of Wisdom.'
'Do not go too far,' Sleep warned.
'You know that I cannot go to far,' Folly said. 'I may speak in a way that is misunderstood, but I cannot speak falsehoods.'
'I am not altogether convinced that there is a difference between the two, brother,' Sleep said calmly.
'Well,' Folly said defensively, 'I grant to you that it seems unseemly to speak the truth in such a way as to deceive, but men and spirits are so prone to Folly that one could not speak at all if they had to be certain they would be received in the proper way every time they spoke.'
'If Folly is truly as vital to the world as you say, then you win even when you lose, brother,' Sleep complained.
'Do not resent me, brother, it is not I who has ordained things to be so,' Folly said. 'But the greatest Wisdom involves the greatest contradictions. Indeed, to be and not be cannot be distinguished from one another, since pure being, like pure nothingness, has no qualities.'
After a long while had passed, Leai sat up slightly and looked around the camp. Nonix was sound asleep, but Candor sat staring motionless at the sky. His uneasiness had apparently won out against the power of Sleep in the end. She wondered what he was thinking about. 'Candor?' she asked softly.
The Black Adder looked at her, surprised to see that she was yet awake.
'You speak of things that can be seen when you say that all things are material and have material for their causes,' she said. But if the gods are the makers of material, as indeed we are taught, then wherein can you deny them simply from the fact that all you see is material? If we said that they were material, like unto other things, then you could, from not seeing them, deny them. But no one teaches this! What do you and your people deny then?'
Candor thought for a while and then answered, 'We do not deny anything. We simply do not know. That which can be perceived is all that we can know, and only the opposite can be denied. But gods and goddesses cannot by their very nature be perceived, so we do not know them, and we find all such belief to be dangerous pretense.
'And is not the banning and forbidding dangerous as well?' Leai asked.
'Not as dangerous,' Candor answered firmly, 'as permitting superstitious beliefs to reign over society.'
'I speak not of society,' Leai protested. 'I am speaking of the truth. If the truth were bad for society, then it would still be the truth nonetheless. Doubt the gods; but to slay and forbid their followers because you don't know, and because it is bad for society...!'
'I am not a god-hunter,' Candor said defensively, though he knew that there were such men among the Lapulians - not god-hunters by name, of course, but god-hunters in deed.
'What you do may not be dangerous to the society,' Leai said, 'but it is dangerous to the truth. For you prevent men from believing in that which may very well be true, for all you know - and you have admitted that you do not know. Indeed, you seem to think that you cannot know. Thus you cannot know whether you sin against the truth even as you do right by society. This is blindness.'
Candor leaned back and rested his hands behind his head. The stars shone down on his head. 'I am not here to hunt gods,' he protested, not wishing to think any deeper on such things.
The Teachings of Theodysus
'He does not yet know how deeply he will become entangled in the things that are about to happen,' Sleep said sadly as he, more forcefully this time, sent the campers into a slumber. 'This too is your work, brother,' he said to Folly.
'Is it not a fine jest,' he said to his brothers, 'that men think they know more of the past than of the future, when in truth their memory can be just as clouded as their expectation? And when both the past and the future are, in themselves, as clear as the present, being distinguished from this most certain of states only by perspective, then the joke becomes complete.'
'It seems a cruel jest, brother,' Sleep said. 'But cruelty is folly also, I suppose.'
'I tell you the truth, brother Sleep,' Folly said in a moment of sincerity, 'you cannot have wisdom without Folly.'
'You refer to the birth of the Dragon,' Death said.
'Nay, I speak of his death. But for one such as he, death is a birth and birth is a death.'
'Again you speak nonsense,' Sleep complained.
'What is sense without nonsense?' Folly replied.
'Please brother,' Sleep said, his tired voice for a moment losing all signs of weariness, 'for once speak clearly. Speak the truth, but speak it to our ears.'
'The one who will give his name to the Nameless, he will speak the truth about the Dragon, and thereby unmake him. I will say no more about the Dragon. I would not dare to usurp that which is his right, and that about which I only know because I have received it from him in the first place.'
'Tomorrow these travelers will find the camp of Theodysus, and they will find welcome there for but a short time. Tell us, brother, what are we to expect. Time comes to a point, and we would know what will come to pass.'
'I have already told you,' Folly said. 'The Great Dragon, whose might has torn the world asunder and remade it a thousand times, will be unmade.'
'But how?' Death said. 'I am the slayer of all things that live and breathe; how is it that you know what I do not know concerning his end?'
'He will be slain, brother Death,' Folly said, 'but not by Death-steel. One word - one little word shall fell him.'
'You are speaking of the teachings?' Sleep said. 'You are speaking of Theodysus.'
'He was born into this world with the doctrine of the Hidden Name upon his lips. And the doctrine will bear his name for as long as the world endures.'
r /> 'What are these teachings,' Sleep asked, 'that you seem to be so excited to hear? If you know them not, then why the excitement? If you know them, what need have we to hear them?'
'They are unknown as yet, but known to all,' Folly replied.
'How is such a thing possible?' Sleep complained. 'For it would seem that if they were known, then they could not be unknown.'
'It is on the surface only that things are so limited,' Folly answered. 'When things are considered as they are, they make sense. When they are considered as they appear, they also make sense. But when the appearance is taken along with the thing, then they cease to make sense. But it is only when the two are taken together that they are, truly, the truth.'
'You will have to explain things better than that, dear brother,' Sleep complained, irritated that it was to Folly that the deep wisdom had come.
'You wish to hear the doctrine of Theodysus? Go and see him, and then you will know it!'
'We shall, but we would have you speak it all clearly to us, and in order,' Sleep said patiently.
'Very well,' Folly laughed, amused by the frustration of his brothers. He held his hand out toward his brothers - the three of them were now seated around the fire, though they would have seen what he did just as clearly wherever they were standing. Upon his empty palm appeared a small cube, carved and painted on all of its sides with strange runes and figures.
'What is this?' he asked.
'Do not mock us,' Death warned. 'It is a die.'
Folly swallowed and looked nervously at his brothers before continuing. He let the cube slide down his fingers and then, just before it fell off his hand he flicked it up into the air. Before it landed in his hand, however, it stopped in the air. There it stood as if suspended upon a string, spinning as though it were still in its descent.
'And so is this?' he asked, hoping they would not be angered by the simplicity of his question. They nodded. 'But if this, which stands still and this which spins are both dice, wherein is the dice? Is it in the markings? Is it in the runes? I can change anything - even the shape, and it will yet be a die?
'Consider the die as it rests upon my hand. What figures face the stars? It is a lion, and the rune for the number fifty such as it is used by the people of Lapulia. Now I cast it - and lo, it is now the Dragon, and the rune for nothing. Wherein are the die the same? I do not mean to ask, as I did before, how two dice are one thing, though they are two. I ask now wherein is this die the very die that I cast? For the one contradicts the other, the first showing the lion, and the second showing the Dragon. But a thing is not the same if it is not the same. But yet I cast only one die.
'A die is only a die if it can be cast, but what thing can be cast without losing itself to contradiction? When the die is such and later different, what remains?'
'All that remains the same, when things endure through time, is the name. The word "die" is that which binds the die and the die cast, and the die as it comes to rest. Everything else alters and contradicts. But understanding is union, not disunion, and so it is only when the chaos of experience is brought under the power of a name that it bears the form in which we know it. The die in my hand cannot become the die elsewhere, for then it would be opposed to itself. But the name by its nature encompasses both, and so it is not the die, but the name that endures. The name is the being of the thing.
'This is true when I consider the die, not only as it changes in time, but also as I consider its form. If I rest my finger upon the Dragon's tail, I can then say that I am touching the Dragon. But I am more than my finger, and the Dragon is more than its tail - nay, it is not a Dragon at all but for that which I touch not. And I am not a man except for that which touches not. I touch the Dragon only in name.
'Things have their being in their names, for being itself, also, is but a name. Nothing can be different from another thing unless they have some contradiction between them. But no two things are the same, and so it is only in the name that two things can, despite their manifold differences, both "be".
'To understand a thing is to give it a name. If I asked you what a thing is, your answer would always, if it is to truly give me understanding, be a more general thing. What is a deer? If you answer that it is any specific deer, then I will think of that deer and not the others that contradict it, and so I will not truly understand the creatures. But if you answer me more generally, saying, a deer is an animal, then and then only will I understand. For that is what understanding is - the name stands under the thing, and is its being and substance.
'To understand all things is to understand Being itself, which is the name given to all things. But things are not things outside of the name, and so the origin and father of all things is being. And being is expressed in the little word "is", which is a name for all truth. For what is not, cannot be true. Being, truth, "is", real, these are all names by which we comprehend this one name. But whereas all things are made understandable by this name - by the name "being" - this name cannot be understood by anything but itself, for it is the highest of all names. So everything is understood within "being", but "being" itself cannot be understood - for it IS understanding.
'The Hidden Name is the name Being, which stands under all things, both those things that extend and those things that endure. It is hidden because, standing for all things, it stands for nothing alone. This is why I said that the doctrines of Theodysus are unknown, yet known to all.
'If men did not have the truth within them, then they could never recognize it when it comes to them. If they have it, then their ignorance can only be born from the fact that they have failed to look within.'
'They do not understand because of the Dragon's blindness,' Sleep said as he nodded at Folly's teaching.
'This is why he has come,' Folly said, speaking of Theodysus. 'He will teach the Dragon, and he will uncreate him by his teachings - by teaching him the Hidden Name.'
Watching over Candor's camp, though without perceiving the spirits or their strange conversations, was the elf Ghastin. He had heard enough of their talk to learn that the travelers meant to join up with the camp of Theodysus. He knew that he could have snuck into their camp and killed them while they slept, but he was not entirely sure that he wanted such a man to perish. A man who had made a mockery and a joke of elvish power. He did not even mind the fact that he was included in this humiliation. He was so filled with resentment toward the elves and their stupidity that he fully appreciated every circumstance in which the elves' pretensions were exposed, whether it meant his own humiliation or not.
He carefully stepped away from the camp and made his way back to a small camp several leagues to the southwest. 'They are heading toward the camp of Theodysus,' he told the god-hunters.
'How did you learn this?' Eberu asked, when Ghastin had made his report. 'And you left them to escape us?'
'I am no god-hunter, master Eberu,' Ghastin growled. 'You do not give me commands, and you do not question my actions. I found your villain - a villain who slew so many without receiving a scratch, and who stole a book from the Lord of Morarta. I certainly could not hope to match him, whether waking or in sleep!'
'Taral!' Eberu shouted, shaking his head with frustration. 'Gather the god-hunters, every last one. We ride hard to the north tonight!'
'My lord,' Taral said, rushing to his master's side. 'The camp is in Goblin lands.'
'Do you now protest against your orders because they are perilous?' Eberu thundered. 'The Lord of Morarta has been mocked; Ilvas has been attacked by this man. Men have been killed for the sake of his religion. He it was who rescued the fanatic Theodysus from the dungeons of Morarta - of this I am certain!'
'What will you have me do, then, my lord?' Taral said, bowing low.
'Ride north with twelve god-hunters this very hour, and slay these fools before they break camp. I will follow at first light with a hundred men to destroy the camp of this so-called healer Theodysus. And do not hesitate be
cause of their elderly and their women; you have heard what these men are capable of doing, and how they injured the Lord Sol of Alwan and slew so many men of Ilvas.'
It seemed to entirely escape Eberu that it was but one man, and not the men of Theodysus who had done all these things. But the circumstances surrounding the escape of the healer had been so humiliating to Eberu that the slightest opportunity he had of escaping blame was a like driftwood floating upon a treacherous sea. He grasped onto it without feeling any need to learn more or to determine whether or not the two persons were connected. Indeed, in his mind the strange intruder who blasted a hole in Ilvas' wall may very well have been Theodysus himself.