by Aaron D. Key
This time I protected myself so that I could concentrate without direct involvement and tried to stay there in the torrent of emotion that apparently came from Glant. There was terrible isolation, guilt, a feeling of inadequacy, pride, anger, a fierce desire for perfection: all normal emotions for an unhappy person but magnified many times and projected across an entire population. Was this intentional? I couldn’t believe it. For someone to feel pride so strongly, it was unlikely they had intended to display their many flaws so clearly. The loneliness was so terrible. If I had ever thought I was lonely before this I would have thought it a puffin’s scraping compared to this bottomless abyss.
Also, this emanation was a huge and pointless waste of power serving no useful purpose – except subjugation, which could be achieved in many more efficient ways, I was ashamed to know.
I resisted the temptation to pry and decided to shield Monta instead, casting a barrier around his mind like the casting of a delicate net over wriggling fish in a shallow river. I appreciated the ease of this more in contrast to the display of excess practised by Glant.
I returned my thought back to my own body but not before catching a flicker of awareness from Glant. Careful and deliberate as I had been, something had alerted him to my presence.
My body sat still for a while, waiting for the customary return to full control. I felt the wind on my face and a smell like damp grass in the air. I opened my eyes and saw that Monta too was sitting without moving, a strange expression on his gaunt face.
“Are you alright?” I asked, hesitantly.
He nodded. He held his hand up as if to silence me but after a pause whispered, “I didn’t believe that you would really be able to help us. I believed that I was walking back to death or at best a continuation of the pain. I had never really believed that it could be stopped, although I tried to believe it. Now I believe, I realise that is pain in itself.”
“So Glant is not in your head anymore?” I asked to be sure.
“No. No one is in my head except me,” he said, leaping up. “Heal Koa too.”
He seemed to have gained extra energy and enthusiasm, almost becoming unrecognisable as the man I had briefly known. It made my heart warm to feel that I had given him this gift. I dragged myself up and made my way back to Koa.
“I can protect you as you sit here. I know what I am looking for now,” I reassured him as I sat down beside him.
It was easier this time. I didn’t need to dive into Glant’s pain. I just cast the net. He jumped up with a smile on his face. I felt Glant’s consciousness twitch again and wondered what the consequences would be.
“Can you feel the difference already?” I asked, choosing to disregard worry.
“Even inside the city, the pain is more like a brutal headache that lasts all day. But I am free from it now. Thank you, Damon Ich.” Koa wrung my hands.
“Can I go outside?” he said, with wonder in his tone, and delicately stepped over the threshold that marked the city. And then he began to dance in a mad ecstasy.
“I’m outside! I’m outside!”
He ran to the nearest tree and hugged it. I sat still and tried not to judge his enthusiasm. I had never lived with a constant source of pain. I had never lived in a dark hole, denied access to nature. How would I react? Something similar, I imagined. He threw himself down on the grass and appeared to be smelling it and then looked triumphantly across at us, where we were still sitting inside the city walls.
Monta smiled across to me as if we shared a joke. I smiled back, but I was thinking about how Glant would react and how quickly.
“We must share this gift,” Koa said as he finally dragged himself up and walked towards us.
“I need to find out why Glant is torturing you all in this way. I need to find out how he will feel if you are all put outside his reach. If I can’t reconcile him to this state of affairs or defeat him, he will quickly find another way to torture you.”
My words dampened the atmosphere almost immediately.
“You need to meet him?” Monta said.
“I do,” I replied without enthusiasm. “But I need to talk to Koa first, find out what he knows. If I am prepared, I have more chance of success.”
“Talk to Koa quickly. I am going inside to find Herai and some food. I know we ate today but I feel like I have been fasting for months.”
Koa looked at me questioningly as Monta stomped into the darkness.
“How long did he think he had been away for?” Koa asked. “Is it possible that he was?”
“He thought he had been trapped in a tower with a woman called Elena for months. It is possible he was. I think she has the power to manipulate time.”
“Elena,” he repeated, without emotion.
“I was hoping you knew something about her,” I said. “There is more to the mystery of Glant than a man who likes to give other people pain and if I could understand it, I may be able to resolve everything.”
“I wish I could help you but I’m in the dark as much as the next person. I just have theories, which I would be reluctant to share with you as they may be wrong.”
“Even theories are better than being in the dark.” I smiled and added, “The only thing is, Glant probably knows I am here now. If he was reading your mind he would know where we are.”
“How about we move quickly somewhere Glant would struggle to find us? He can’t send his guards out here; I don’t think so, anyway. Why don’t we find somewhere to shelter outside, and I will share what I know, or at least what I think I know?”
I agreed and we walked together under the leaf-spotted sunlight. I suggested a few spots, but Koa seemed keen to put as much distance as possible between him and Glant’s city. We passed a few derelict wooden huts that seemed oddly out of place in this peopleless woodland and one that looked in good condition.
Koa no longer appeared to be enjoying the woodland. He crouched down and whispered to me, “There is a rumour that Glant lives out here. We should be careful.”
Despite his words, he slowly and almost silently made his way to the back of the hut. Here was just a blank wall of wood. I assumed the opposite side held windows and doors. There was a voice: not loud but arresting. It was clear even over the rustling of leaves and buzzing of insects. We listened.
“Why all this fuss about finding Monta? You’ve never bothered about where’s he’s been before.”
“Things are moving. Monta is playing his part. I have transformed myself into a monster and called in the dogs. He is one of my dogs and I need to know where he is.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Aeth. I never know what you mean.”
Aeth! I silently mouthed to Koa. He frowned, as confused as me.
“It’s Glant talking.” He spoke so quietly I saw rather than heard him.
Still, the voice continued: “This whole city thing was a mistake. Without Glant it means nothing to me. With us pretending to be Glant, it is nothing. I thought it would occupy me a little, a diversion, but I am sick of it.”
“Would you say that? I’ve been enjoying playing Glant when you don’t interfere, although I have been lonely.”
“Do you think I didn’t notice your flirtations? It’s hard not to notice when you’re borrowing my body. It was a mistake, but at least it’s kept you occupied and out of trouble.”
“It’s not your body. It’s mine, and I should be free to do what I want with it.”
“I sense a rebellion.” The voice chuckled.
“I’m not rebelling, although sometimes I wonder why I don’t. I trusted you to lead us out of this chaos.”
“The plan is progressing nicely. You just need to be patient.”
“I have been patient but you’re not going to torment them again, are you? It’s bad enough that you cause them pain when you feel like it.”
“If I hadn’t done
that they wouldn’t have needed rescuing and then all my plans would have come to naught.”
“You’re keeping me in the dark. I understand that you wanted to stop them roaming, otherwise we would have a city with no people in it. How does Monta endured it?”
“I have helped him endure. His straying is vital to my plan.”
“I am glad of that. I’ve grown very fond of some of them. I don’t want to lose them, but I don’t want them to be in pain either.”
“You should be fond of them, but this is not where either of us should be.”
“I don’t understand you. Is there somewhere else we should be?”
“I’ve much work to do to restore the universe as it should be. And now is the time. Don’t worry, you will play your part – without even knowing that you are doing it.”
And then the conversation ended. I called it a conversation because it sounded like that, but there had only been one voice. A man talking to himself?
I thought I could hear movement but I was not sure. Then silence.
I eventually grew brave enough to put an ear to the cabin. Would I hear breathing if someone was there waiting to catch us out? Then I found a crack in the wood and saw the interior of the cabin. It was luxuriously equipped for a cabin in the woods but empty as far as I could see. Aeth was alive and mad. Aeth was Glant? Who was Elena? I was confused but followed Koa’s urgent hand signals to come away and we walked again in the woods, this time cautiously, aware that someone else we did not want to meet could be walking there.
CHAPTER SIX
Avoiding Conflict
Koa looked worried and distracted, but at last a brook wending its way through trees and grassy knolls seem to be too much temptation for him and we stopped.
“Glant is not Glant?” he said. He sounded broken by the conversation we had heard. “I thought that if Glant could grow to love one of us then perhaps all of us could be saved. At least I understand now why he hates me.”
I did not know what to say but the pause was uncomfortable.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’ve been a fool, made to look a fool, and I don’t want to be reminded of it,” Koa said as if he was clearing his mind of his troubling thoughts.
“Just tell me what you can. How you came to be living here with Glant as your leader – if you can do that?” I said. “Don’t worry if it’s true or not – just give me your understanding. Leave me to decide what I believe and what I don’t.”
“It’s complicated,” Koa said slowly. “It was like one day our lives were wiped away and we were given new sketchy facts. Everything we believed had happened we only imagined or vaguely remember. For example, Monta thinks that once he had a great love. But none of us remember it. We can’t even think who it could have been. Even Monta has racked his brains and thought about every person in the city and feels nothing, not even a glimmering of remembrance. He only feels like he was once happy, and it has been stolen from him.”
“Would it have been Herai?” I asked, remembering Monta’s affectionate tone.
Koa laughed. “Unlikely. I don’t see Herai as Monta’s type.”
“And then there is the mystery of the barbers. Six men fully trained to shave facial hair and barely any need for their services. We sort of remember, like a childhood memory, that Glant used to hate beards. We told each other in jest that once he had beard mites. Every man used to have to be shaved at least every third day. We remember this but it didn’t happen, and Glant himself has a beard these days. I have grown one myself just to test him.” He stroked his beard with a laugh. “But we still have six men with no other skill. How did that happen?”
I sensed that Koa was getting bogged down in his confusion and he wasn’t the only one. I tried to stay on track again.
“Monta said that you tell each other stories of Glant’s origin?” I asked. “How does Aeth fit into it?”
“Well we did tell each other stories but after what we heard today, I don’t believe any of it. Aeth – was it? – was just pretending to be Glant. Is anything we thought was true, actually true?” Koa shook his head. “But this is what we thought we knew. It started, we used to say, with love. Aeth was Rael’s friend. He once lived in the same place and time as Rael and they knew each other before Rael brought him back to live in Herron. Aeth also knew Rael’s wife. Her name was Elena.
“Well, the story goes, Aeth had always loved Elena ever since Rael’s wedding, the first time they had met, but had never told her. When they all came to Herron, Aeth was always there beside them, left out in the cold. He could bear it no longer and he told Rael why it was that he had to leave. Rael took pity on him and they arranged that Aeth would look on the other side of the desert for somewhere to live. Because Rael trusted him, he agreed to give Aeth power. Aeth left on his journey with some adventurers who were happy to explore with him.
“Next day, Rael discovered that Elena had left with Aeth and he was angry, thinking she had been taken against her will. Then he found a note that said she believed he had never loved her. That she would relieve him of her presence and that he should feel free to marry again if he ever wished to.
“Rael could not understand it. He had really believed, as everyone did who had seen them together, that they loved each other. He believed that he had been betrayed by Aeth, but he couldn’t work out how.
“Aeth reached this place with his band of followers and an apparently loyal wife in Elena. They set up houses in the woods, some of which are still there, and their lives began to take on shape as they conquered the environment they had found themselves in. Life was good. The land was fertile, the climate was mild, there was water, wood in adequate supply, and Aeth had power to acquire anything else that they needed. He also brought back people from other worlds, as Rael did, where they could be useful and where their own lives were impossible to live. Everything seemed to be going well with Aeth, although Rael sunk lower into hopelessness and depression.
“One night – the story gets a bit unclear – Aeth was also betrayed, and his power taken away by force. No one knows where Glant came from or who he was, but he may have been one of the people Aeth brought back from somewhere else who had not yet settled into the community. Aeth’s body was found but Elena completely vanished, and everyone assumed she had been involved in the struggle and destroyed, perhaps trying to protect Aeth. From this night, Glant was the one who held the power … and the rest is history. We know this story, although our memories do not go back so far.”
Koa had told the story in an almost song-like tone of voice as if it had been told many times before. The sound of the tinkling brook played in my head like temple bells. I wanted this moment to last for ever.
“Your memories of this bit of your past seem quite clear compared to your other memories. It feels like a story you have been fed.” I considered it. “It’s strange that we don’t know this story, as it should be part of our history. We’ve never heard of a rift between Rael and his wife.”
“That is odd.” Koa shrugged. “As I said, I no longer know what is true. But you said to tell you everything we think we know.”
“I am grateful to you.” I was aware that I had cast doubt on his words.
“I think I’d better check on Monta now,” Koa said. “Do you want to come in and see our city?”
He stood up and took a last lingering look at the clearing around him. I felt that I had insulted him somehow – although I’d had no intention to do so. I was happy to follow him but sad to leave the peaceful brook.
“Follow me.” We wended our way through the woodland and back to the dark, ominous stone of the city pushing forth from the ground like an alien object, a meteorite that had landed instead of blasting a hole in everything beneath it.
“Take my cloak,” Koa said. “Unless you are ready to be taken to Glant now, we should disguise you. I assume you aren’t ready yet?�
�� He looked at me as if seeking confirmation and I felt the accusation even though it had not been expressed. He had expected more action and I had disappointed him, but I was just trying to make sure the outcome was a happy one all round, I justified to myself and tried to shake off self-doubt. I wanted to impress Koa. He threw the hood of the cloak almost over my eyes and pushed on through the darkness. I followed him on the meandering path until he murmured, “This is the main corridor now. Walk by the side of me and take my arm. You will look like a patient of mine and no one will notice you.”
“Are you a doctor?” I asked, impressed.
“The nearest thing we have to one,” Koa said, a smile in his voice.
The corridors were quiet.
“Everyone’s at work,” Koa said. “But we should watch out for guards.”
My eyes were struggling in the low torchlight that barely touched the blackness. It was heightening my other senses. I felt heat on my skin and heard the quiet hissing of torches as we passed them.
“I want to check on Monta,” Koa said. “I didn’t like the look of him.”
“Do you know where he’d be?”
“I have an idea,” Koa said grimly.
“He wasn’t ill,” I said in a vague attempt to be helpful. I couldn’t help noticing things wandering around people’s minds. “And he shouldn’t have been hungry. We’d eaten well before we came to find you.”
“Really?” Koa said. He sounded unimpressed. “I’ll look for him in the Sickrooms all the same. It’s a place he likes to hang out.”
We made our way through the dark tunnels for what seemed like ages. The city seemed deserted, though I accepted Koa’s assurance that everyone else was working in a place we had missed in our travels. Still, the silence in the dark tunnels felt heavy, ominous. I followed Koa’s urgent hand movements into niches a few times and stood still and silent, taking Koa to be my guide.