All that day Korman was tormented by doubt, as he resisted the thought of using the sword and tried in vain to communicate with the Lady, either by word or by mind. Were the visions he had of the Lady in her astral form in the Dreamweb just figments of his imagination? Was she really no more than this beautiful but lifeless body he saw before him night and day, mocking his faith? He thought of Shelley, waiting so confidently for his return. What would she think if he came back with nothing to tell but that the Lady, the incarnation of the Goddess, was just this rag doll or wax image? The mindwebs of Phagrapag, the sorcerer and inquisitor of the Dark Labyrinth, began to seep into his unconscious, filling it with dark imaginings and fears. And, growing in persuasive power, came the image of the black, restful Void, eternal rest for the weary, final solution of all the problems of life. Still he stood, or sat, eyes downcast, waiting, thinking, trying not to think, since all thoughts led to despair.
He drank the last drops of water from his flask, and was still thirsty. He envied the Lady her peaceful sleep. Time dragged on – or had it stopped and only he went on, edging closer to death or madness?
Then the apparitions began. He heard the voices of children crying out in pain and terror, and wagon wheels rumbling along the Avenue of Despair. Time and again he tensed his muscles to run out into the road and confront the children's tormentors, and he had to tell himself, banging his forehead with his fist, that it was only an illusion from the Dreamcasters, sent to flush him out of hiding. They knew he was somewhere in the valley, and Rakmad had ordered visions of tormented children to be projected into all the avenues and byways. This Phagrapag had done, thoroughly.
He also sent out wagons with real children inside, open to view in cages, but the children were endarkened, and only pretended to be crying piteously in pain and fear, and if Korman appeared they would spring at him, bite him and scratch his eyes, helping the drivers, ruthless warrior priests of Phagrapag’s garrison, to bind him fast with thorny twine and mindwebs of irresistible binding.
But Korman, seeing through their deceptions, gritted his teeth and dug up clay, spat on it and pressed it into his ears, stopping them until all he heard was his own laboured breath, the ringing in his ears and the sound of his pulse.
Then, much later, another sound came directly into his mind, starting off faint but growing urgent and loud; desperate pleading that stabbed straight to his heart. It was the voice of Shelley herself, in distress, calling out, ‘Korman, save me! They’ve caught me! Please help me! It’s me, Korman! Don’t hide away! In the name of the Lady, please come! I’m in the Avenue of Despair. They’re taking me to the Dark Labyrinth! I don’t want to go there! Help, help!’ Then, as if talking to someone else, she cried out, ‘Oh no, no, no! Please don’t…’ and her voice trailed off into a wail of terror and agony. He heard the sound of a whip cracking. Korman pressed his hands to his ears, in vain; he believed that it was just a mindprobe, but it sounded exactly like the voice of Shelley, and his heart was wrung with pity and doubt and grief, and slowly the sick tension that led to migraine began to build.
The voice finally faded, and he was left sure that she was indeed captured, or about to be. He thought, ‘I do not believe she will have left the safety of the island, not yet. But who knows, they may have the means to see into the future. What I heard could have been a premonition of her fate, passed on to my mind by their foul arts.’ His past and future blurred into one disastrous tragedy, a futile melodrama in which everything he did went terribly wrong. His head began to pound with the familiar pulsing pain of his migraine, as if iron bands were clamped about his pulsing brain. Then something seemed to be tightening the band, relentlessly squeezing, telling him, ‘Unless you yield to the Void, this will get worse without end, until you die.’ He reached inside his clothes – the last of his willowbark was gone. There would be no relief that way, and meditation seemed impossible now.
Sitting on the prickly thorn-mould, he felt the thorns in the valley growing, creaking and crackling as their roots and tendrils lengthened and wove ever tighter and spread across the lands beyond, swallowing up all hope. Death began to seem preferable to life, and all the teachings of the Void, impressed upon him as a boy when he was in the hands of the Aghmaath, felt truer than anything he had learned since. Already half of his brain was saying, ‘I come to the Void,’ and he heard, drumming in his head, the hymns he had sung uncomprehending then, and now they all made horrible sense. One in particular kept sounding its seductive dirge in his half-crazed brain:
Gather, gather all to the Dark,
Through pain to the Void where all is one.
So shall it be, so shall we make it.
Only the Dark shall endure!
The light of life is a candle
To lead us to the Edge of Darkness.
Then blow it out!
Only the Dark shall endure!
Masters of the Void, may all come to you!
Tenderly, firmly, we put out the lights,
One by one, world by world!
Only the Dark shall endure!
‘Gather, gather…’ he began, grimly, and the wave of nausea rose in him, and he retched, again and again.
But as the day of suffering wore on into afternoon, and the sun finally left the patch of sky overhead, and the thorn alcove was mercifully shaded again, he began to feel his dark thoughts clearing, as if by sheer weight of numbers they began to fall off his shoulders and roll away like spent thunderclouds. His headache also began to release its iron grip on his skull, and he knew that it had been his own thoughts that had caused it, and he laughed grimly to himself at his folly.
‘I have been trained in “being with” and “letting go”, and here I am, holding on and resisting everything, as if by my worrying I can save the world or turn it from its course!’ And he remembered that all a Guardian must do is his duty, and this is often simple enough, at any moment.
‘So, now, my duty: what is it?’ he thought. Then he saw himself as if from the outside, and he laughed again. ‘I have been blinded by the sight of the very thing which I most desired to see: the Lady! It is the sight of her, and my pity for her, which has closed my inner eyes from seeing, and stopped my inner ears from hearing.’
He looked about him, and the place was transformed. He saw that life went on, with little insects scurrying and building leaf-nests and burrows, butterflies hovering over tiny flowers in the ground, and flocking to the roses which miraculously grew from the thorns themselves. He saw a tiny thorn-fox, once a native of the forests of Namaglimmë, now at home in the thorn thickets. Even the cockroaches had their place there, turning the leafmould to rich humus. And, fluttering in the shadows, he saw two hope-moths, the big silvery-grey moths emblazoned with the sign of opposites in union, spiralling around a white centre, which symbolised for him and for others of the old faith, the promise of the Goddess that life would go on, finding a balance even in the darkest times.
He closed his eyes, and saw a light which grew until he found that he was again in that sacred space where the inner eye is opened, and all places are Here and all times are Now, and there is no separation. He knew in that moment that Shelley was perfectly safe. He saw her glowing with the inner light of the Goddess, and smiled. Then he saw the blue glow of the Lady, and he was one with her love which knew no bounds, and the blissful light of her was all around him.
Then Korman spoke with the Lady, and only a part of all that passed between them in that reunion can be told in words. The Lady smiled. ‘Welcome back, Korman.’
And Korman replied, ‘Forgive me, Lady! I have been seduced by outward appearances. I know now we were never apart, except in my mind, which is, as you know, prone to chase illusions and doubt reality.’
‘Do you remember your path now, Korman, which we chose together before we entered this life?’
‘I remember. But I tremble in doubt. To my outer mind, this path seems an illusion and folly.’
‘Remind yourself – try speaking the
story we chose together in the Light before time.’
‘You and I chose to come to Aeden one last time to restore the balance of the Zagonamara, the twin spiral of Life, which was broken when the Arcra-Nama was removed…’
‘To show that the Life comes from within, not from without…’
‘So that it can never really be taken away from the world.’
‘And we chose together to hold that balance, come what may, and let it grow in the very midst of the thorns, so that under its protection the Kortana may be empowered and come into her own. She no longer needs you as her Guardian. Well done.’ She smiled at him, and her smile was like the break of day in the mountains of the Makers, and for Korman time stood still.
At last he spoke again and his voice was clear and full of joy, ‘I am now free to join you in the mystic realm, the heights from which Faery flows, and there create with you the story of the new Overcoming.’
And the Lady replied, ‘Their darkness shall be embraced by the light, and so be healed.’
But now Korman hesitated. Rational doubt, his familiar friend, was speaking to his inner mind even in that exalted place, boldly going where angels fear to tread, and it said to him, ‘Beware, Korman, of hasty jumps into the unknown. Who knows whether this is the real Lady, and not some final folly conjured up by your desire, to the ruin of all?’
And the Lady, whose faith was beyond his as the eagle is above the mountain, said nothing. She knew his mind was racing, like a rat seeking boltholes from the light of a opened door, but she trusted the Unfolding of their story, and waited.
Now Korman came out of his blessed trance, and stepped forward, out of the shadow and security of his mindwebbed corner. He now stood in the middle of the alcove, in the gloomy light of the fading day. He bowed before the Lady in full view, and knew that he was already perceived by the enemy. Quickly he pulled the amber ring from his finger and cast it into the thorns at her feet. Then he waited for his captors.
On the avenue outside, harsh footsteps broke the silence, tramping in unison. It was, Korman knew, the goose-stepping Aghmaath troopers, though he had never seen them. Before them in triumph stalked Hithrax, certain now that Korman was his. Never mind that all his mind-traps had failed; this final stratagem had worked. That was all that mattered. The Lady had been the bait; Korman the fly was caught in the web of his futile and rebellious love for her, and finally the wily old web-weaver had come out of hiding. The irony of it was delicious to Hithrax’s embittered mind.
It had been a long time since anyone of consequence had been endarkened. He desired to be the first to cast Korman into the black fire of the Void, to see all his presumption and pride of life burned away, leaving him naked and illuminated by the black light, one with all the rest, servant to the one truth: that all is Nothing, and Nothing is All.
‘My worthy adversary in the game of “Flee from the Void”!’ Hithrax croaked sarcastically as he came up behind Korman, who stood still, looking up at the impassive face of the Lady serenely floating in the thorns.
Korman whispered fiercely, ‘Say the word now, Lady, if what we just spoke of in vision was a lie! If I am to fight, give me the word to strike! It is now or never!’ He drew Arcratíne, and the light glittered up and down its polished facets, sharper than razors. Hithrax backed off, and motioned to the police troopers behind him to hold back. If Korman struck now, Hithrax gloated to himself, he would be undone. All he had learned in hiding, the yielding to the folly of the ‘Way of the Zagonamara’ that the accursed witch had taught him, would be stripped from him. His arm would wither again, and this time he would not escape into the wilderness, but be brought to the Void, and finally forced to despair of all his false hopes, and yield to the truth. Hithrax’s face cracked in a kind of smile, and the bristles on his head stood out.
Korman raised Arcratíne high, and all his pent-up fury was set to burst upon the enemy. But still no command came from the Lady. The air above the alcove gathered heavy stormclouds into a vortex in the sky, and Korman gave a great shout, seeing that the power he wielded was now greater than it had ever been. Sudden lightning seared down into the crystal blade and a brilliant white light shone from it. The police troopers covered their eyes, and some flung themselves to the ground. But still Hithrax waited.
Suddenly Korman laughed, as one who sees some hidden truth, or solves a riddle. He raised the sword in both hands and pointed it downwards, white-hot, crackling with blue lightnings. ‘Hethür, Krithür, Shaktha!’ he cried, and plunged Arcratíne deep into the ground. Molten fragments of rock sprayed out and ran in molten balls over the clearing into the thorns, igniting them. The burning branches shuddered and writhed, but lashing tendrils whipped and extinguished the flames.
Arcratíne stood pulsating, half buried in the rock at Korman’s feet. Slowly its light faded and went out. Hithrax now ran forward and tried to pull it from the ground. But lightning sprang from the sword into his claw-like hands. He sprang back, nursing the burn. Enraged, he gave the signal. The police troopers stood forward and held Korman’s arms in a pincer-like grip. He did not resist them, but smiled and looked up at the Lady one last time as he was spun savagely around and made to face Hithrax. There was a silence, then Hithrax lashed out and struck Korman in the mouth, and his heavy, clawed hand drew blood.
‘Such insolent laughter is forbidden by law, Guardian! Only those who have yielded to the truth may laugh, if they will.’
‘And what is truth, Hithrax, servant of darkness?’
‘Soon you will know, rebellious one.’ He paused as if thinking, then said, ‘This is the truth!’ He stalked around the alcove, ripping the roses from where they grew on the thorns, every last one, reaching higher than any man could have. Then he ground them one by one into the dust with his huge scaly feet. ‘All life is pain, all hope is pain, all love is pain. Only despair is the doorway to relief; then death is final release!’ He spat the words of the Traveller hymn with an almost insane ferocity. But then his voice, as he came back to face Korman, became almost gentle, fatherly.
‘The only truth you need to know, Korman, is this: relinquishment of the wheel of life is the only way out of the hell you are in.’
Korman smiled at this, and again Hithrax struck him on the mouth. ‘I begin to despair of you. Perhaps in the Labyrinth you will finally see the light, and find release. Then, enlightened or not, you will be returned here, to be enthorned beside the accursed witch, for the edification of others, if not yourself, fool!’ He motioned to the police and they frogmarched Korman out of the alcove of the Lady.
Chapter Forty-six
The Dark Labyrinth