A Bright Power Rising

by Noel Coughlan

  The faithful heart shall feel no shadow. Its only ambition shall be to serve.

  The City of Eternal Noon shall be reborn on the ruins of Gleam.

  The Lights who mocked Aurelian shall become his crown.”

  This was his creed, pieced together from dreams. This was the cause of his suffering.

  Damn the birds. Why should he miss them? They were the White Light’s servants. The Lord of Storms had sent them to tease him. They offered him companionship and then forsook him to drive him mad with loneliness. The White Light’s scheme would not succeed because its very existence proved that the Harbinger was right. Aurelian’s rivals considered him a threat because he was destined to prepare the Ors for the return of their Bright Lord.

  I must not fail, he thought. I cannot. I am weak. I know it. Yet I have endured so much. The Golden Light sustains me.

  He ceased his prayers. They no longer mattered. His heart sang more eloquently than the weary lip service of the Consensus.

  When the brand of the sun had cleared from his eyes, he scrambled back up the cliff. After he climbed over the little stone wall, the air shuddered. The wall crumbled, showering loose stones down the cliff. It was a miraculous escape. If he had lingered below a few moments longer, the falling debris would have killed him.

  The collapse reminded him of the quake that struck the deathblow to the hallowed city of Gleam. Memories stirred of its walls cracking apart, folding and collapsing like torn fabric.

  Something was happening around him, some kind of geologic seizure. The ground was steady, but rocks spilled from their perches and a peculiar shiver lingered in the air.

  It ended as suddenly as it began. He hurried to the village to check his hut. He thanked the Golden Light that his little cell remained sound. Not a single stone had shifted. The other cells were untouched by the tumult. Elsewhere amid the ruins were signs of fresh devastation: toppled walls, loose stones rattled free of mossy shrouds. The gable end of the wretched nursery had dissolved into rubble.

  The day’s events filled the night and left no room for sleep. The White Light had taken away his winged companions. That was a certainty. The earthquake was a different matter. Was it also the White Light’s doing, or was it the deed of another Light? Aurelian might even be responsible. Perhaps the five prophecies were about to be fulfilled at last. How frustrating. Great events might be happening elsewhere, and he was trapped on this forsaken island, severed by the sea from the rest of the world.

  He was so blind, so feeble. The Golden Light’s mind should be transparent to his oracle. He shouldn’t have to hurl guesses at this mystery. He should know.

  Then again, a mouth cannot see. Can it hear? No. It can only speak. A servant needed only knowledge specific to his function. He must have faith in his master.

  A tickling on his cheek caused the Harbinger to wake. Dust sprinkled his face. A loud grinding sound like a thousand gnawing jaws closed in around him. Another quake, more sustained than the last.

  He fled the hut, his blanket under his arm, and his sandals in one hand. He stood a safe distance from the cell till the tremor halted. When the ground calmed, he stared at the hut’s entrance, afraid to re-enter. What had been a snug refuge from the weather was now a waiting tomb. He slept the rest of the night in the open with the blanket and a fire to ward off the damp air.

  Over the subsequent days and nights, quakes of increasing intensity shook the island. Around noon on the fifth day, a loud bang crossed the sea. Another followed, and two more in quick succession, then others at random, as if the shell of the world was slowly cracking apart.

  Scanning the sea in the direction of the booms, he saw clouds like prodigious black fingers reaching over the horizon. The inky plumes spilled across the sky with alarming speed, quenching the noon sun. The world was blind but for the lightning flashes that tore through the calamitous blackness.

  Convulsive thunder shook the air. Hot, feathery ash began to fall. Balls of flame exploded against the earth. It was too dangerous to remain in the open, but the sturdiness of his cell could not be trusted, so he stood in its entrance watching the unfolding catastrophe, enduring each hot, choking breath, fear-stricken and awed.

  At any moment, the vast conflagration might spill from the sky and destroy him. The sooner the better. At least this torture would be over. If only he could lie down and sleep till the flames took him. But it was impossible to look away from the cataclysmic spectacle. The world roared as though wounded. Stones rattled down on the domed roof of the cell. The earth trembled with pain. There could be no escape, no reprieve.

  Then, in the midst of this destruction, a miracle occurred. A tapered light appeared atop the gnomon, its profile reminiscent of the edge of a hand. Was it blue or white? No, it was tinted a ghostly yellow. The Golden Light had sent him the sign he’d so desperately sought at the moment of his greatest despair!

  Further calamities followed. A great boom deafened him as the incessant night blinded him. A thick mantle of ash smothered the island. The frothing sea surged up the island's precipices and ripped away chunks of land. But the greatest scourge of all, fear, was gone. Even when the golden hand disappeared, it burned on in his heart.

  He murmured quietly, “A great darkness shall precede Aurelian’s coming, as the night precedes the dawn.”

  Weeks of night passed before the sun pierced the terrible black pall over the world. It was weak at first, a sickly green disk smeared by murky shadows for a few hours around noon. The next day was brighter and stronger but brought heavy rains which lasted for a week. Black rivulets carried ash and filth off the island, into the sea. Then, one morning, the rain stopped and the sun burnished the skies, and the Harbinger could bathe once more in his master’s light.

  Evening was fast approaching. The retreating sun bled across the sky and the sea, inflaming everything with its violent color. High on the cliff, he watched a little black beetle-like boat struggle across the bloody channel that severed Evercloud from the mainland. Squinting, he sighted it between finger and thumb and imagined it wriggling vainly there. He pinched his fingers together, snapping the gap shut as if to crush the boat. The fate of his torturers would soon be in his hands.

  The little boat drew close to the bottom of the cliff. Three figures, their garments tinted red by the sunset, scrambled up the rocks. They leapt from one black boulder to the next, till they reached the cliff-face. Then, they began a slow, painful ascent.

  The Harbinger stood. Age and hunger made him stiff.

  A guffawn alighted atop the only cell still standing after the cataclysm, the Harbinger’s home. He picked up a pebble. “Welcome back, you faithless coward!” he cried as he flung the stone at the bird.

  The stone missed, and the guffawn flapped away.

  He awaited his visitors in the shadow of the gnomon. They were unmistakably flaxen-skinned Ors. Two had golden, shoulder-length hair, no doubt the current civilian fashion. The one in the center sported the cropped cut of a soldier. They wore the elegant finery of ministers on official business, but their dishevelment after their climb made their appearances comical. Their tunics were soiled, their hands blackened, and the names tattooed on their foreheads were partially obscured by dirt. The Harbinger recognized the lineages. The faces of a Soliferreum, a Consilium, and a Ferocitas were unmistakable. The ill-concealed horror on their perpetually young faces as they beheld him was strangely gratifying. To them, he must seem a living cadaver.

  The Consilium in the middle apparently noticed the Harbinger squinting at his forehead. “FervidServant is my life name,” he croaked. “I and my fellow ministers speak for the Consensus of Lineages.”

  “And what does the Consensus wish to say to this heretic?” the Harbinger teased. “It is early in the year for my new attire to be delivered. Or perhaps the Consensus feels that, given the unseasonably cold and wet summer, I need them now.”

  FervidServant blinked. “Pardon?”

  “The Consensus, in its mercy, provides
me a fresh set of clothes every year. I assume you are here to deliver it? The island provided all my other needs till recently.”

  FervidServant ordered one of his companions to give the Harbinger some food.

  “Do not be afraid,” the Harbinger said as he watched the Soliferreum’s wary approach. “My aging is not contagious. As far as I know. Or fatal. Though it damned me more than any of the theological arguments the prosecution spun against me at my trial.”

  The Soliferreum gingerly handed the Harbinger a small loaf of bread and a water skin. The skin was too full for his frail arms to lift.

  “Help him,” FervidServant commanded.

  But the other Ors didn’t move.

  Casting irritated glances at his reluctant companions, FervidServant picked up the water skin, opened the stopper, and began to dribble some of its contents into the Harbinger’s mouth.

  He drank what he could of the falling water as it washed his mouth and chin and neck. “Thank you,” he said.

  The bread inspired a strange revulsion. He took a bite and chewed the dry, tasteless dough. It was so hard to swallow. “Did you come from Mothport?”

  “Mothport is destroyed. We rowed here from the city of ServeAurelian. The sea swept away all the coastal settlements as far east as Seascythe, and thousands of Ors with them. Even the Peacemaker’s fortifications along the Gulf of Fosse were damaged. It will take months to repair the wall,” FervidServant said, his eyes glistening.

  “May the sun open its arms to their spirits. If this island was a little more hunched, I might have shared their fate.” And none would weep for him. “Do all the lineages survive?”

  “They do.”

  “Well, that is some comfort, is it not? What a terrible loss a lineage would be.” He bit off another chunk of bread. His appetite was returning. It was tempting to recount for his visitors the apparition of the golden hand, but they were unworthy of the revelation.

  “And the Consensus sent you here to bring me this news?”

  “The Consensus charged us with bringing you to the capital for questioning on the matter of these unnatural disasters blighting our land.”

  “Am I being accused of causing them?”

  “No. The Consensus hopes you might be able to shed some light on their nature.”

  The Harbinger smirked. So, the Consensus was lost. The enlightened leaders of the Ors were stumped. The fine rhetoric echoing in their meeting chamber could not placate the cries of a people demanding an explanation for their sudden misfortune, so the Consensus turned to the Harbinger for the very reason it had exiled him.

  “Tell the Consensus I will appear before it in due course, if it is the will of Aurelian.”

  FervidServant frowned. “You obviously do not understand. We are here to take you to the Consensus.”

  “I will make my own way to the city of Sunthorn if Aurelian wishes.”

  “How?” FervidServant blurted. His confusion was pleasing.

  “Tell the Consensus this, also. None can compromise with the will of Golden Light. I prophesied the terrible darkness before the dawn, and it has happened. I prophesied the sun reborn in flesh, and it will come to pass.”

  “How will you come to Sunthorn?” FervidServant demanded, his voice quivering with frustration.

  “The answer is here.” The Harbinger opened his fist and pointed to its center, laughing. “Here in the palm of my hand.”

  “Enough ravings from this madman. Night fast approaches. We are leaving,” the Consilium declared.

  “What will you tell the Consensus?” one of his comrades asked as they walked away.

  “I will tell it not to waste my time with such idiotic errands in future,” he said. “Our land is in chaos, our people without shelter or food, and I am sent to trade jests with that ridiculous fool.”

  “Leave me the food!” the Harbinger yelled.

  FervidServant grabbed a satchel from the Soliferreum and flung it in the direction of the Harbinger.

  “You are not so certain Aurelian will fill your belly,” FervidServant observed.

  “You will change your tune the next time we meet,” the Harbinger muttered to himself as he watched the Ors disappear down the cliff.

  The Harbinger lingered in the decrepit stone village till he regained enough strength through nourishment and rest to climb down to the sea. His path was not the easier southern descent favored by his visitors. The western side of the island was a sheer rock wall bowing gently inward, but a large fleck of yellow shone on the black rocks at its base. Such a sign from Aurelian could not be ignored.

  Slipping his sandals into the satchel on his back, he eased himself over the edge of the cliff. Progress downward was slow. Every movement wracked his body as he swung and jerked, striving for handholds. His grip slipped, and for a moment, only one hand held him to the cliff. With massive effort, he pulled himself upward, seized a ledge with his other hand, and planted his feet in niches in the rock. He continued down the precipice. Another might be afraid of plummeting to his death, but not he. What had he to fear, when the Golden Light guided him?

  It took him most of the afternoon to reach the beach at the bottom. The object of his journey lay straddled across two boulders. It looked like a raft from a distance, but on closer inspection, it was a ragged sheet of pale yellow rock. Its spongy appearance belied a brittle hardness.

  Scattered across the beach were smaller pieces of various sizes. Some fragments danced on the waves racing onto the shore. Farther out to sea, a rash of yellow specks bobbed on the water. The strange rock had to be a boat of some kind.

  He pulled it down from its perch. Its lightness was surprising. He hauled it into the sea till the waves carried its weight. The evening sun was already painting the world in fire and shadow, as he flung himself onto the raft of pumice. He paddled out to sea till, overcome by exhaustion, he entrusted his fate to his god and let the flaming waves steer his course.

  5

  From lands of endless summer came

  This thornless rose, this sacred bloom,

  Petaled with gold, shining as flame,

  Its perfume all other loves’ doom.

  FROM ALACKALAS AND THE FAIR PRINCESS.

  Grael stole a glance at Harath. Her face was stiff with boredom as Saint Marden mumbled prayers by her side in the cart. He and Radal Faral conspired so successfully to keep Harath isolated from the rest of the caravan that she was more like their prisoner than their charge. Grael’s hesitant intimacy with her in the forest was a happy memory and an impossible dream. He would give up his newfound fortune if he could have that closeness again.

  He sighed.

  “You’ll be home soon enough,” Joloth said. Joloth, always jolly, always nearby, always watching. It was hard to ignore the implication of this surveillance, but to challenge it might only serve to confirm the worst suspicions of Harath’s guardians. Doubtless, it would be worse in Pigsknuckle. Scandal, real or imagined, was never forgotten there.

  Grael vented his frustration with a sigh. “If we were permitted to walk home by ourselves, we would be already there.”

  The saint ceased his droning and fixed his eyes on him. Grael stared back defiantly. Saint Marden looked away and started praying again.

  “But you couldn’t leave your fortune behind,” Joloth said, clapping Grael’s shoulder. “These carts aren’t goats. They can’t skip up the sides of mountains. That’s the trouble with youth—not enough patience. All good things come to those who are patient.”

  Around noon, a loud bang, sharper than a thunderclap, shivered through the mountains. Here and there, the white mantles of mountains slipped, pouring feathery spumes of snow down their sides. After Grael and the Cronesmen had calmed the frightened horses and oxen, all eyes looked to the sky for the cause of the boom, but its faultless blue only deepened the mystery.

  Joloth shrugged. “Maybe your Pig decided to turn over.”

  “If it did, I hope it did not roll over my village,” Grael snapp
ed, cutting short Joloth’s half-hearted chuckle.

  “I’m sure Pigsknuckle is safe,” Joloth said. “As safe, at least, as my own village.”

  After giving thanks to the Forelight for his protection, the party continued their journey.

  A dark gauze spread across the sky. The sun gradually dimmed throughout the afternoon till it was a cool, blue-green ball. The air had an unseasonable chill.

  Grael overheard two Cronesmen whispering ahead of him.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s unnatural.”

  “See, I told you. Radal was right to give this treasure away. Ill omens follow it.”

  “Aye. I’m loathe to admit it, but for once you’re right. Nothing good comes from the Gilt Spider. His spilled blood must have cursed it.”

  “Excuse me one moment, Grael,” Joloth said as he quickened his pace. He squeezed between the two Cronesmen and clamped his arms across their shoulders. They exchanged whispers. One of the Cronesmen glanced sheepishly back at Grael. Joloth released them and drifted back to Grael’s side.

  “Don’t mind those superstitious fools,” Joloth said. “They have nothing in their heads except overeager tongues.”

  Grael nodded and tried to hide his disquiet behind a smile. The Cronesmen’s exchange explained Radal’s urgent generosity with the Jinglemen’s possessions. What doom was Grael bringing home to his people, his family?

  No. Radal was a righteous man. He could never be so devious. Besides, the Gilt Spider had never been near the carts. Though to be sure, Grael would ask his brother Charlin to bless it when he got home.

  As the green sun slowly slipped behind the mountains, the sky raged with ocher, orange, and crimson, as if the world beyond the Stretches was afire.

  The caravan was nearing Pigsknuckle when crimson snow began to fall.