Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars)

by Jim Grimsley

  I have said that one carries no feelings into trance, and this is true. But the part of me that was in this vision felt a ghost of emptiness and longing, wonder at his beauty, till a figure crossed the clearing heading toward him and the vision faded.

  When I returned to Commyna and the meadow, the transition being much smoother this time, I told her what I had seen. She asked if I had been thinking of the Prince prior to the trance, or if I had willed myself to see him in any other way, and I answered that I hadn’t been conscious of doing so. Though he was never far from my mind. I said this simply and plainly. Commyna had no comment, though she paused on the remark.

  She had no means of affirming the truth of this vision, she said, but she had monitored my mental state and it appeared that I was using the proper far-seeing technique. She started to say something else but thought better of it. “I have part of my answer,” was all she said. Patiently, she commenced my official instruction in trance-sight.

  At the end of the session I was tired, ready for rest. Illyn’s nightfall was approaching, and I would not return to real time for a while. We headed to the lakeside, where Vella and Vissyn were building a fire. I would not sleep there but would use another technique the women had taught me for doing without. They would feed me and after tea and conversation my training would continue.

  But before we reached the shore, I said to Commyna, “I have one question I didn’t ask before. About my mother.”

  Her face filled with sympathy, though sternness overlaid it. “All right. If I can answer it.”

  “Why would Drudaen summon her? Why does he keep her alive?”

  “He‘ll use her to torment you.” She had no expression on her face. “It would be better for your mother to be dead.”

  Abruptly she turned away, heading for the brightening fire. I stood in the meadow for a while.

  2

  The Queen’s Second Army, under command of Drudaen Keerfax, marched across the southern plain, pausing at Pemuntnir to meet another army, the Fifth, on its way from New Ivyssa to Genfynnel, the northernmost of southern cities, ten days march from the border of Arthen. I learned about this body of soldiers at Illyn Water, during deep trance while Vissyn was teaching me to guide my disembodied awareness. Drudaen had six thousand soldiers with him. The Fifth Army, four thousand strong, was under command of General Nemort of the House of Tours, formerly the Military Governor of Novris. He was leading an army in our direction.

  I had heard no rumor in camp of Nemort’s march. When I asked Vissyn if Kirith Kirin knew about the army headed north, she answered that he most likely did not, since spies bearing the news had not yet reached Arthen. The Sisters could only guess at the purpose of sending so large a force, but it seemed likely General Nemort was to reinforce the garrison in Cordyssa, perhaps to become Military Governor. “Drudaen will be giving Nemort his final briefing,” Vissyn told me. “One wonders who decided to assign Nemort to this, Drudaen or Athryn Ardfalla. Drudaen isn’t fond of Nemort, from what I’ve heard. And Nemort is known for his mistrust of magicians.”

  Later we were bathing in the clear water following a long session of meditation, during which Vissyn had guided my internal vision to scan the place we guessed Drudaen would visit with his troops. We hovered over Montajhena and I examined the ruined city as summer was taking hold of its battered stone remains, from the Court of the Twelve to the old palace, Turmengaz, and the fire-scarred foundations that flank it. I saw the blackened stump that was Yrunvurst and the charred wreckage of Goerast, the two High Places of the city. One saw patches of green grass, beds of flowers on velvet-lush leaves, multicolored tufts of lichen, winter birds searching the earth for stray seeds, scattered remnants of food among tumbled marble columns, broken bits of statuary, shards of stained glass, a fanfare of gold leaf smudged with soot and sand. One could feel the far off echo of power, the faintest smell of sulfur, the sweet taste of air where lightning has struck.

  Soon it became apparent we had guessed right. Drudaen and his thousands set out northeast from Fort Pemuntnir, headed for Vyddn and the ruins of Montajhena.

  Ostensibly his reason would have been to station troops at the south of Cundruen, the mountain pass that leads from Montajhena to Drii. But he had never before come within a day’s ride of the ghost city since Kentha died in it, so this march was significant, evidence his fear of the ruins had lessened or his need had increased. The Sisters were not sure why. For the first years after the fall of the two towers in Montajhena —Yrunvurst was rebuilt after Jurel died there, and then destroyed again— travelers avoided the place altogether since it was feared to be cursed. Nowadays some hardy caravans did pass the city ruins and undertake the crossing of Cundruen to Drii, and this was thought to be proof that any general curse had subsided. Though Drudaen feared something Kentha had left behind for him in the wreckage, it was said, a gift he had given her.

  I listened to this history patiently, since questions rarely did me any good. Most of the time the lake women told me exactly what they wanted me to know and not a word more, lest I become glutted with information, they claimed. True, I had plenty to think about.

  One day, I was in sixth level trance, guided by Commyna, who was choosing to work without words as she often did. I felt myself become aware of a new sensation, her hands articulating hidden instructions into my wrists, the trance deepening, attaining a level unfamiliar to me, and finally, with a sense of buoyancy, I rose up in the air and looked down at myself.

  Commyna spoke to me in Wyyvisar, without physical voice. Suddenly it seemed to me that I was not floating outside myself but that I had gone very deep inside my brain instead, and had become small.

  She was teaching me the duality meditation that allows the spirit to separate from the body and to travel. The Wyyvisar phrase for this practice translates as “casting inward and outward with the spirit”, though in the translation the idea becomes flat and the words contain no sense of the process of accomplishing these two separate things, let alone doing them as one. The idea in Wyyvisar is like a bright light. The Wyyvisar concept of spirit includes in it our concepts of consciousness, sightedness, will, and motion in time. The spirit extends itself in two directions, one to the created space in the mind that becomes the speaking place for Wyyvisar, which is in fact the place where the magician’s strength begins; the second, to outside the body, to a place that can be either above, to the side, or out of sight of, the physical body. In the meditation one can emphasize one extreme over the other, one can shift from outside the body to deep inside the small place, but both meditations are done at the same time. The spirit may only move outside if it has first moved inside, as if the magician’s sight is leveraged outside the body by the movement within, the two existing in balance.

  The world of within I had seen before, but from a higher level of magic, when the Sisters took me to the house in the mountains. I had felt my spirit disembodied in this way, and I was able to remember how one moved in this space (by wanting to move), how one saw (by clearing away thoughts), what one heard (phrases of music, chords, sometimes singing). Commyna had a presence adjacent to me, and she asked if I wanted her to take a form, if that would help to orient me. I answered no, I thought I was all right.

  This is a mind-space, she reminded me, and I heard her as clearly as if she had spoken. Remember that this is how your mind perceives the magic that you do, what you see here, but this itself is not real. This is your perception. By remembering that, you can learn to divide the awareness further still, by changing the mind-space.

  Then, as if there were no contradiction at all, she went on. What you do in the mind-space is real. The mind-space is as valid as any other. When you speak Words there, the world beyond will change but the mind-space will not. The mind-space will always be the space where all things already exist as you wish. When you speak Words there, you will speak to eleven directions of the world.

  When we spoke in Jisraegen, she called that space the “kei”. It was a word
from old stories for when a magician was in the clouds on the High Place. Grandmother Fysyyn taught it to me.

  Commyna left me to make what sense I could of the contradiction and her riddles. My lesson began again.

  She taught me simple things: how to make a thing appear in the mind-space by picturing it, how to give an object the illusion of substance, how to make it move. An edge to her instruction, a trace of strain. Near the end of this session she paused. “I’m going away for a moment. Don’t be alarmed.”

  Her presence vanished. The nebulous light dimmed. In the silence, I could see various shadows on their way to becoming shapes. I hung unmoving in something like misty air, waiting for Commyna, without whom I could not return to my body.

  Music clarified, and suddenly a landscape formed. A thing like a gem spinning and unfolding on its facets blossoming a figure who emerged in the eerie light, a woman with dark, thick hair framing her face, tumbling down her back. She was wearing a cloak of fire, holding something in her hand that glittered. She walked toward me smiling softly. She was like my mother in the face. She lifted her hand and I glimpsed a jewel in it. Her smile became wistful, and I saw anger in her eyes. She hung the jewel around my neck. She seemed about to speak, but then Commyna returned and the image dissolved.

  We returned to our respective bodies, the process being simpler than getting out in the first place. Commyna waited till I had restored my breathing. “You did well, very well. I’ll tell you more about that later. But there was a power near us. Did you sense it?”

  I said yes and described what I had seen.

  She asked for details about the woman’s appearance. I told what I remembered, but the image had been indistinct, or seemed so now. The figure had worn no jewelry, had borne no characteristic blemishes that I could see. Commyna asked that I visualize the woman as specifically as I could. I did as she asked. Her cool fingertips brushed my brow. After a moment she thanked me. “I can’t tell you everything this means.” She was agitated. “But here is one more piece of news, if you can think about your training again for a moment.” She touched me tenderly for the first time. “You know you have traveled out of the body? You know that’s what today’s lesson was about?”

  “I think I could do it again.”

  “I believe you could, too.” This was unlike Commyna, I thought. Her face was less stern than a moment ago, almost more tender than I had ever seen it, except when she was weaving in the meadow. “It is impossible to do the dual meditation or to displace any portion of the spirit out of the body from sixth level sleep. Today I led you to a fifth level trance. This is the test of passage from sixth level to fifth, Jessex. Now you are a true adept.”

  3

  One’s power increases not arithmetically but exponentially from one level to the next. From fifth level, as a novice, I could call wind out of the mountains as long as I was pretty near them, and I could make clouds darken, and bring storm. I could see under every leaf for miles when I was meditating, so that I knew where local deer drank water, where eagles nested in the high peaks, where to find a salt lick or a hillside covered with mountain cilidur. I could call Nixva without spoken word. I could make charms and potions that healed wounds quickly, or inflamed sudden lust, or love, or other feelings, or I could cause fainting, nausea, or illness.

  I practiced these arts on small animals and other subjects. I had never been cruel before, had never willingly caused any creature pain, but now, to a degree, this was my study. In magic the doing of virtue or evil can turn on the inflection of a Word. The lake women were unstinting in my education. I learned both paths.

  Vella said to me one day, almost conspiratorially, “Once we might not have taught you the arts of unmaking, though we’ve always known them well. One expects a good pupil to understand that where there’s the One there’s the Other. There is darkness and there is light. But we left many to discover the negative magics on their own, without discipline or perspective. We won’t make the same mistake with you.”

  Looking back on that time, I find it hard to estimate how many real days or months passed while I lingered at Illyn Water, lulled by the singing of the Diamysaar. Certain uses they make of time make the notion of objective time irrelevant. Magic was the seeing and bending of the waves that make events. Magic was seeing time from the outside, singing a harmony in the present that will bring a change forward from the past.

  When I was at camp I was like a shadow walking in sunlight. The Twice-Named were far away through late spring, and since I made no new friends during that time I had no one to talk to except Axfel. He and I walked through the moonlight, my fingers scratching his burr-tangled head, his tongue hanging just above the ground. This was my silence, the peace that I could have, since Axfel expected nothing except me.

  I was not the same boy who had entered Arthen so long ago, or even the fifteen-year-old child who had walked blithely up Sister Mountain. In Suvrin Sirhe I became apart from other folks, full of secrets. My mind was fevered, flooded with Words I could not forget and dared not say. It is dangerous even to think a phrase in Wyyvisar outside of the kei, for the construction of the thought itself is power. When one is guarding one’s mind as closely as I was— since the lake women continued to warn me never to use Words away from Illyn — it is difficult to make friends. Particularly when one lives among folk who already suspect one of dabbling in magic. I was called witch boy more insistently than ever, never to my face but pretty freely behind my back. Uncle Sivisal was the one who told me about the gossips. Not everyone knew we were kinsfolk, and he sometimes heard tales he’d be better off without. He said, as before, the best thing was to get used to the talk but never to allow anyone to call me a name to my face. But the resurgence of the nickname, when my friends were few and far between, made me doubly careful. During the afternoon and evening I hardly spoke to anyone, except during the ritual or in the common tent. Gaelex thought I was sick and had a camp doctor examine me. The doctor reported that, in fact, I was very healthy.

  I never lost touch with the rumors that reached camp by messenger or by merchant, but I also got news from the lake, and my only care with what I heard was that in camp I should not appear to know more than anyone else. I heard of Nemort marching long before outriders swept through camp searching for Kirith Kirin. The news of further rioting in Cordyssa reached me long before it reached Gaelex. I was the first in camp to know of the hanging of the tax collectors.

  The story of those times is famous now, and the events of those days have been handed down to history as the beginning of the long war that followed. The Cordyssans had come to Arthen to warn Kirith Kirin that conflict could no longer be prevented, that Cordyssa must rebel or face financial ruin at the hands of the tax collectors, that the numbers of the poor had swelled on the city rolls, farmers who could no longer afford to work their farms flooding the city from every corner.

  The Nivri and Jhinuuserret were days reaching any agreement as to what to do. Their meeting took place in an encampment at a place called Nevyssan’s Point, the northernmost finger of Woodland, because Kirith Kirin could not leave Arthen, and consequently this meeting has become known as the Council at Nevyssan.

  It is remembered Kirith Kirin won all hearts at this council. He had been long forgotten by the powers of the north, he who waited patiently in Arthen, obedient to the Law of Changes. When the City Nivri complained that the Blue Queen’s rule was burdensome, he laughed at them, he who had fought for every meal these generations, he who was prisoner in Arthen, he who should have been King a century ago. “You know her now, do you?” he told the first to complain to him. “Well, she’s the same as she’s been for years.”

  It is said he dominated this meeting by cunning, realizing he alone had sufficient personal force to carry off seizure of the gold and arms from the Thynilex mines and Smithies, as well as incite rebellion in the capital of the Queen’s northern government. Many stories are told of his political finesse, charming this House or that. Few remember
the truth, that Kirith Kirin advised against rebellion, despite his bitterness toward Athryn and Drudaen. War with the Queen would bring down a swifter ruin than any tax. He wrote that in the letter that summoned them to Nevyssan. It was the Cordyssans who would not listen to reason.

  Even Ren Vael joined those pressing Kirith Kirin to lead a revolt. It was he who finally convinced Kirith Kirin no other choice remained. If the Nivri houses did not lead the movement to throw out the Queen, they would be forced to watch the mob do it with any leaders to be found. Cordyssa was stuffed with farmers who could no longer make a living from the land and poor folk who could no longer afford to pay the tax on bread. Kirith Kirin agreed to the rebellion, all right, but only when it was plain he had no choice.

  What he predicted at Nevyssan has been remembered, mostly correctly, the years since. “Don’t dream that this conflict will stop at the gates of Cordyssa. If we lift our hand against Queen Athryn in the city, she’ll bring us a fight that will cover Aeryn in blood. We won’t be freeing one city if we take up arms against her. There’ll be no end to the war once it’s begun, until Athryn’s throne is fallen or we’re all dead on the pyre, smoke in the wind. The Wizard will come north and all will be ruin.” The words did no good. The decision was to make war, and at last Kirith Kirin, out of weariness, agreed.