Seeker stared at him.
"How do you know that?"
"The same way you know it."
"You hear voices, too?"
"All the time."
"Where do they come from? Do you know?"
"Yes, I know. And so do you. But you've forgotten."
"Then, tell me! Make me remember!"
Jango smiled and shook his head.
"Please!" said Seeker. To his shame he felt tears rising to his eyes. It was all so difficult. He had lost so much. The sadness could not be kept inside any more.
"Dear boy!" exclaimed Jango, much moved. "My dear boy! This won't do."
He produced a faded scrap of handkerchief and dabbed at Seeker's cheeks.
"What has happened to distress you so?"
It seemed the old man knew nothing of recent events. Seeker told him how Anacrea had been destroyed and, with it, the Nom and the Lost Child he had sworn to protect. Jango listened and clicked his tongue in dismay.
"And you believed you were meant to prevent this?"
"Why else have I been given the power?"
"To kill the savanters. I thought that was quite clear."
"I have killed the savanters."
"All of them?"
"All but two."
At this, Jango looked very grave.
"That is unfortunate. Do you know where to find them?"
"In the cloud."
"The cloud has gone."
"Gone?" Seeker was dismayed. Where was he to find the savanters now?
"You will have to go another way, I think."
"But I don't know any other way."
Jango pointed at the old wooden door in the wall behind him.
"This way, perhaps. If it is a way."
He rapped on the door with his knuckles.
"To be exact, I suppose it's a door. And yet when you start to think about it, you discover that there is nothing exact about doors. I mean, what is the essence of a door? A plank of wood isn't a door. Nor is a hole in a wall. Nor is a plank of wood fixed into a hole in a wall. It must open. One must, you see, be able to go through."
Seeker felt confused and disappointed. Why was the old man rambling on in this way?
"Yes," he said. "Obviously."
"Obviously? It took me years to understand that. So you believe you can identify the essence of a door?"
"No, no." Seeker shook his head. "I don't really know what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do." Jango gave him a reproachful look, as if he were a student who had forgotten a recent lesson. "It's the threshold, of course. The threshold is the essence of a door. The threshold lies between here and there." He pointed with one finger. "You cross from here, over the threshold, to there."
"Yes. I can see that."
"Excellent. That's cleared that up, then. Where were we? Oh, yes. The last two savanters. You must find them, you know. It is your mission."
"It was. But now the Nom is gone. The Garden is gone. The All and Only is gone."
"Your Nom is gone," said Jango. "What makes you think it's the only one?"
"There's more than one Nom?"
"Of course. It would be a poor sort of a god that could be sent packing so easily."
As he spoke, there came a soft creaking sound from behind him. The door in the wall had opened a few inches.
"Well, well!" murmured Jango, and he smiled his sweet smile. "The door seems to have been left open."
Seeker paid full attention to the door for the first time. It was made of wood and had once been painted white, but the paint had long since peeled away. All that was left of the pigment was a thin line in the cracks between the boards. The door had a curving top that fit into a stone arch built in the wall. The threshold too was stone, worn by the tread of many feet over many years into a smooth hollow.
Through the gap now opened up between frame and door, Seeker expected to see a plain white room, a table, a blue flower. Instead he saw the branches of trees. He began to feel a very strange feeling.
"Am I to go through?"
"If you want to," said Jango.
So Seeker pushed the door open wider and stepped across the threshold.
He found himself in a large wood of tall leafless trees. A path ran in a straight line between the trees towards a dense stand of evergreens ahead. Seeker followed the path, feeling with every step a mounting excitement that he could not explain.
Where the evergreens began, the path passed through a gap in the thicket of yew and holly that was just wide enough for a man. Seeker went through the gap. Beyond, the evergreens fell back to create a circular clearing that was walled and roofed with dark foliage. Very little light penetrated the canopy, but where it did, it fell in narrow beams that laid stripes and speckles on the woodland floor.
Seeker stood still, in silence, hardly daring to breathe.
Could it really be so?
He turned to look back. There at the end of the path between the trees, he could see the wall and the open door and the old man standing silhouetted in the doorway.
He looked round him, his heart beating fast. He had been in a space much like this before. It had been called the Night Court.
He looked back once more. Jango raised his stick and held it horizontal over his head, echoing the stance of Noman long ago.
"Go on, Seeker," he said, his voice sounding close though he was far away. "Your life is an experiment in search of the truth."
Seeker pressed on. Beyond the dark vaulted clearing was a grove of aspens. Their smooth silver trunks stretched out before him in the winter light, like pillars of alabaster. He had come into the Cloister Court. There was no path now. Every way between the trees was the right way.
Now he knew what he would find. He felt it before he saw it, in the awakening joy of his heart. A glimpse of brightness between pale trees. A dazzle of green. He trod quietly forward, and little by little he made out a high tangle of bramble and vine, a natural screen that rose up beyond the aspens, guarding and concealing the space within. Between the knotted tendrils there were little gaps and crannies, like the pierced stars and diamonds in the silver screen, and through these apertures he could make out green grass and the bright ripple of water and the scarlet and gold of flowers.
He closed his eyes. Even without seeing it, he knew it. The sensation of sweet tranquillity was so powerful that he could feel it in every part of his body, in the unknotting of his muscles, in the softening of his skin.
He had come back to the Garden. The Wise Father was watching over him still.
He opened his eyes and saw through the web of brambles that there was a person in the garden; just as he had seen before. The light was behind him, as it had been before, and was bright, so that he could make out no details of the person's face. The figure was seated and did not move.
The light was growing brighter. Seeker wanted more than anything to see that face, but he felt his eyes burning, and could look no more.
He dropped to his knees and prayed.
"Wise Father, forgive me for doubting you. Now I know that you are Here and Now, Always and Everywhere. My All, my Only. My one true god."
A soft voice then spoke to him out of the Garden.
"Save me."
* * *
William Nicholson is the author of the heralded Seeker, the first book in the Noble Warriors sequence, as well as the acclaimed Wind on Fire trilogy and the screenplays for Gladiator and Shadowlands, both of which were nominated for Academy Awards. He lives with his wife and their three children in Sussex, England.
www.williamnicholson.co.uk
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