The Girl and the Guardian

I have seen you, O Lady,

  In the deepest Void,

  When all they saw was death.

  You are no stranger there,

  But bring forth from empty hands

  Made full by love,

  All the stars of heaven

  And all the springs of earth.

  The rain is your tears;

  The falling leaves, your body;

  And where you fall, the flowers bloom.

  The greatest truth is love!

  And the greatest lie is this:

  That the Void should be the goal of Life.

  But the goal of life is Life itself

  The goal of play is Play

  And the goal of joy is Joy

  For ever and a day!’

  This poem took him the rest of the night, and all night the Void did not trouble him. When he was happy with the poem he brushed the charcoal from his hands, smiled and sat down, ready for whatever would come, and sang softly in the dark.

  So in the morning when they came and opened the door of the chamber, he smiled at Phagrapag and Hithrax and told them he loved Life more than ever, and their wrath blazed forth, and they struck him and ripped his robe from him and tore his beard, and he was sent forth in an iron-barred wagon, shackled hand and foot. But they did not see the writing on the wall of the Labyrinth.

  Hithrax forgot his training as Korman was driven out of the dungeons, and cursed and screamed and mocked at him in his fury that he continued to believe the Great Lie, and loved life still. ‘Korman of the withered arm!’ he croaked, ‘Your arm may no longer be withered, but what good will that do you now, when you are to be thrown whole into the thorns? So shall all your hopes wither, you fool! She who deceived you, and lured you here, she will not save you, but will curse you for believing what she now renounces as vile illusion! She belongs to the Void, now, Korman, do you hear me? To the VOID!’ His skin was dark red now, reflecting his rage, and his eyes turned the colour of blood-amber, glittering with murderous hate.

  But Phagrapag rebuked him, commanding him to self-flagellate before the Void until he no longer cared about the doomed Korman, or the pitiful witch, or any of life’s futile outcomes. Then Phagrapag withdrew, and watched calmly from a high vantage point as Korman was driven down the long Avenue of Despair to his place of enthornment beside the accursed one, the witch, so-called Goddess of Aeden, seducer of men to the Great Lie of life. Something did not seem quite right, but Phagrapag could not put the probing finger of his mind on it. He decided to wait a long time before Korman was released from the thorns for another opportunity to be enlightened. Perhaps, after a suitable time of waiting, he would reawaken him in the thorns for questioning. The idea attracted him, and he rebuked himself for feeling desire. He would consult with his master Rakmad on the Tor Enyása, later. This Korman was getting him ruffled, and that made him worry that he was becoming entangled again in the deceitful web of willing, which only brings suffering and bitterness.

  Meanwhile, he thought, the trap was set; the greatest quarry of his career, a young girl named Shelley, set up by the deluded forces of life to be its next saviour, was even now somewhere in the Valley of Thorns. She would soon hear them proclaim Korman’s sentence of enthornment, and would no doubt be grieved, and come to the bait like a hope-moth to the flame.

  But if she did not, there was also the treasure he had been handed. The Vapáglim. It had been unearthed at the search of the alcove where the lovesick fool Korman had been hiding. That treasure could prove useful indeed. Travel unlimited, he mused – and not just to ordinary places, but to all the most beautiful and powerful places the worlds have to offer. Wanderlust was, he knew, the last temptation of his race. That thing had been made to gratify that lust, and was fair beyond anything he knew, and therefore perilous to his service in the Void. The beauty of old Aeden, the vision of perfection that almost was and could be, lived within its carved starfish island and its amber sea. But he was wise and old – he could resist its power; use the Vapáglim to find the girl. Even Rakmad need not know about it, not just yet…

  So Phagrapag’s suppressed desire ran to lust beneath the bitter surface of his asceticism, and his mind writhed in conflict with itself, and he fingered the treasure constantly.

  Now he called for Hithrax, and commanded him to go secretly that night to the alcove where Korman was to be enthorned next to the Lady, and to lie in wait there in a secret cave in the thorns, and await the coming of Shelley. He now began to doubt in his heart whether she would come – he felt her power growing; her mind was growing beyond his skills to infiltrate, and he knew that this meant she would now begin to have the power to sense his intentions. So, he reasoned, he should use the Vapáglim to hunt her in person, and take her by surprise. So, when Hithrax was gone, he withdrew to a secret chamber to test the powers of the new tool, that ancient device created by his own ancestors at the height of their powers, but also of their folly, before the Makers left to make futile war against the Dark Entities.

  Shelley was getting really troubled. The day was wearing on – coming up to midday, judging by the position of the hot sun almost directly overhead. Something was wrong; she felt it in the pit of her stomach. The gongs that normally only sounded at dusk were clashing and booming over the valley, in triumphant tones she had not heard before. She listened, with a sinking feeling, to the sound of an iron-wheeled Deathwagon slowly grinding along the Avenue, and she knew she had to look.

  Going reluctantly to her tree, she climbed past her sleeping-branch up to the fivefold fork at the highest level, above the main canopy of leaves. From there she watched a solemn procession of Aghmaath, at the front and rear of the open Deathwagon, drawn by pale horses. In the cage stood a single prisoner. This time she took out the spyglass, and with shaking hand and pounding heart she put it to her eye. This time she recognised him. There was no doubt. It was Korman.

  The world seemed to spin around Shelley’s head as she struggled with the horrible fact, and she dropped the spyglass. It bounced from branch to branch and shattered on the cracked flagstones below. She lost her grip on the branches and began to slip down the tree. But blind instinct took over, and she threw out her arms, and her hands gripped a lower branch, breaking her fall. Tears welled up, and soon she was sobbing on the ground, as a chorus of Aghmaath criers, standing in the tops of the thorn-hedges, proclaimed in unison up and down the Valley of Thorns:

  ‘Korman the Outcast stands condemned out of his own mouth, for rebellious acts against the Empire of the Void and the Travellers who are its emissaries. Therefore he is to be punished by enthornment next to the accursed witch whom he served, until such time as it pleases the Mother Thorn or her representatives to disenthorn him for merciful death in the Dark Labyrinth.’

  The eerie voices droned on, declaring that his punishment was just, and in accordance with the duty of the enlightened to teach and edify all those in their care, but Shelley heard little of their speech. She did hear the final terrible words, though:

  ‘Therefore, Korman, we pronounce you Rakaralakké: you are an incarnation of the Accursed One whose will made life and with it suffering. You are Anathema to us. Now you will stand motionless in the thorns, while the sun and stars wheel in their futile courses and the rats gnaw at your feet, until all Aeden is turned to wisdom by the example of your suffering.’

  Then the criers chanted with deep guttural voices, ‘The Void! The Void!’ and the onlookers took up the chant, and it went on and on, slow and rhythmic, booming and echoing, until it sounded like the very heartbeat of the Valley of Thorns.

  Finally the chanting died down, and then in the silence Korman was led down from the wagon and into an alcove in the thorns. The whole valley had fallen silent. She waited with a sick feeling to hear his screams. Or – hoping against hope – the sound of his war chant, Hethür, Krithür, Shaktha! as his great sword, Arcratíne the Jewel-Defender, hacked the thorns and slaughtered the enemy. But all she heard, clear in that silence, was a laugh, echoing
across the water. It was Korman, but not as she had ever heard him before.

  ‘Has he been released?’ was her first, irrational thought. Then, more rationally, she thought ‘He’s gone mad.’ This thought turned her mind inside out, and she began to feel sick. Dizzily she turned away from the hated sight of the Avenue, now clearing of onlookers – cheering fanatics from the thorn fields – as the criers and the grim soldiers marched back to the Hill of the Skull, the empty Deathwagon bringing up the rear. Then the midsummer rain began, pattering then roaring on the treetops of the island as Shelley ran for shelter.

  ‘It’s the tears of the Lady, weeping for Korman – my friend!’ she murmured, and her throat constricted and her own tears came with sobs that would not stop.

  The rest of that day was a grief-stricken blur. Huddled in the cupola as the rain fell outside she imagined what Korman was going through, and burned with indignant shame at his unjust humiliation at their hands in the name of their so-called ‘Truth’. Over and over she wondered how she could possibly hope to rescue him. He had failed to rescue the Lady and was now being terribly punished; how could she escape the same fate if she tried to rescue him? The wind began to sigh through the thorns, and thunderclaps rolled down the valley. ‘Why?’ she cried to the Lady, and angry tears took the place of grieving ones. But her eyes stung more and more until she finally stopped crying. Feeling hollow and empty of feeling, she moved to the least wet and windy side of the cupola and tried to sleep, knowing she could not sleep that night, with the black serpent out hunting – hunting for her, she was sure.

  Finally, in the late afternoon, the thunder died away. Soon afterwards, as if to take its place, came the rumble of a Deathwagon coming down the rocky road into the Avenue of Despair from the east. Shelley braved the rain and dragged herself up the tree again to look. The wagon was ironclad with small barred windows; but she could just make out the little faces of children peering out in fear. Then another Deathwagon came; and another. ‘Maybe Aeden has already fallen, and I’m the only one left,’ she thought, and loneliness engulfed her.

  Then thoughts of despair frayed away the defences of her mind like thornbirds picking at the bodies in the thorns, and sucked at her strength like the Mother Thorn digesting them. And through the opening in her mind which the despair created came thought-forms of horror, images of Korman’s pain, sent out by the Dreamcasters on the Hill of the Skull. She heard a hollow voice in her head: ‘Now the tendrils of the Mother Thorn entwine about the fool’s head, his arms and legs; the probing needle points puncture his soft skin, finding the lifeblood, feeding burning sap into his veins, joining him forever to the Mother, opening his mind to wisdom, and to the Void as it approaches, nearer, nearer! Soon all is darkness before his glazed eyes, pain and horror without relief until he yields to the Void. So, too, will you yield, unless you choose to come to us now.’

  She felt the familiar tug, the drugged allure of the Void, forgetfulness of all pain, all of life’s weary struggles. She heard herself thinking, dully, ‘What’s the use? It’s all an illusion, one big nightmare. All that stuff I was starting to believe! The Chosen One! Huh! Faery! Ha ha! Just dreams, wishful thinking, stupid coincidences. What’s real is this grit in my eyes and the stink of dead things getting up my nose, and my poor body that will probably end up hanging in those thorns in the pouring rain!’

  She could not remember any of the good feelings she had, only the bad. She found she could not even remember her home on Edartha, or the refuges she had found in their journeys through Aeden; only the hardship of the wilderness. And the thorns in the valley kept crackling as they grew.

  But in the midst of her despair a bright gleam of colour caught her eye. Looking up she saw that the raindrops hanging from the glistening leaves and branches were sparkling like diamonds in the late afternoon sun, and some shot out tiny bright points of light, yellow and red, blue, green and violet, depending which way she moved her head. ‘I don’t remember ever noticing that,’ she thought, in sudden delight at the flashing colours which broke through her dark thoughts.

  Then a few brave birds began to sing, blackbirds farewelling the light, as the golden sunset of the third day came, deepening to solemn shades of crimson and purple under the rainclouds clearing from the West.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Shelley and the Serpent