The Eternal Flame

by T.A. Barron

  Wings.

  An enormous, winged horse descended from the sky. Announcing her arrival with a rippling neigh, she gave a powerful stroke of her wings, whose silvery white feathers seemed themselves to be made of starlight. Then the great steed landed in the center of the ring of stones, scattering the remaining wisps of mist.

  The horse turned her rich brown eyes toward Tamwyn. For an endless moment, they gazed at each other, young man and ageless horse. She was, Tamwyn felt, peering straight into his soul, as a bright shaft of light can reach deep into a murky pool. And he knew that she was deciding whether or not he was truly worthy of a voyage to the stars.

  Finally, she swished her graceful tail and spoke directly into his mind. “Are you the one,” she asked in a resonant voice, “who is called Dark Flame?”

  Hearing her say the first word of his name, he winced. Yet he managed a hesitant nod.

  She ruffled her great white wings, folding them tightly against her back. “I am Ahearna, the Star Galloper. Know that I sense much within you, Dark Flame.”

  The horse whinnied, bobbing her head. “I feel the compassion of your mother, and the courage of your father; the joy of running free, a blessing from your grandmother; and the yearning to be wise, a gift from your grandfather. And I sense much more besides.”

  Tamwyn straightened, feeling the torch pole against his back. Could it be true? Was she telling him that he was actually worthy—to use Palimyst’s word—of a journey to the stars? And was she the Great Horse of the riddle? Who could carry him up to the River of Time, and onward to the darkened stars of the Wizard’s Staff?

  Ahearna studied him some more, her eyes narrowing slightly. “Yet I must tell you that you are not worthy.” She lifted her foreleg and stamped the moist grass. “No, definitely not worthy.”

  Tamwyn reeled, almost stumbling. “But Avalon! The stars! Rhita Gawr is—”

  She neighed briskly, cutting him off. “Quiet, young colt.” Her ears swiveled, pointing right at him. “I was about to say that your grandfather, Merlin, was also unworthy. Yet even so, I chose to carry him to the stars.”

  He stood rigid.

  As smoothly as a shred of mist moves through the air, Ahearna stepped nearer. Now her face was so close that Tamwyn could feel the warmth of her breath against his face. “And so,” she declared, “I shall carry you.”

  “Thank you,” he whispered gratefully.

  Instead of answering him, she flicked one ear in the direction of Henni, who stood off to the side. Suddenly the hoolah’s eyes widened within his circular eyebrows. He stepped back several paces, so hastily that he tripped over one of the rounded stones and tumbled to the ground.

  Stifling a laugh, Tamwyn asked, “What did you just do to him?”

  The winged horse snorted with amusement. “I merely told him, right to his mind, that if he even so much as thought about pulling my tail, I would kick him all the way to the next branch-realm.”

  “You read him well.”

  “Just as I read you well, Dark Flame.”

  Tamwyn swallowed, eager to ask a question—and also to change the subject. “Are you, then, the Great Horse on High?”

  Ahearna tossed her head, making her flowing mane ripple in the starlight. “So I have been called. But to me, the greatest horse of all is Pegasus, the constellation that is my home. You see, I fly endlessly around its centermost star, the one called the Heart of Pegasus. That is where I am always circling, ever galloping.”

  Tamwyn recalled his view of that very star from Merlin’s Knothole, and how it had actually seemed to be pulsing with life. In a flash, he realized something. “Your flight around the Heart—the way you keep passing between Avalon and the star—that makes the star look, from down here, like it’s beating.”

  “Rightly so,” said Ahearna with a thoughtful tilt of her ears. “For it is my task, you might say, to keep the heart beating. To keep it safe. That is a task I have performed ever since Merlin asked me to do so, when I carried him out of Avalon for the very last: time.”

  “Merlin asked you? Why?”

  “Because that star—the Heart—is the doorway to Earth! He asked me to guard it not because he went through it to another world, but because he believed that it was the world, after Avalon, which Rhita Gawr would most want to conquer.”

  The horse, suddenly agitated, turned a quick circle, her eyes and hooves flashing under the stars. “And he was right! At this very moment, a terrible dragon is attacking the star’s flames with dark magic, trying to extinguish them—and thus open the door.”

  Tamwyn caught his breath. “And that dragon—”

  “Is Rhita Gawr, I am certain.” She stamped her hooves and flared her nostrils. “I would have stayed to fight him, with all my strength, but Dagda himself came to me in a vision. He told me to cease my flight around the Heart, for the first time in centuries, and to fly as fast as lightning itself to this very mountaintop. Here I would find, he promised, the one called Dark Flame—who, despite his name and his youth, was the only person who could stop Rhita Gawr.”

  Try as he might, Tamwyn couldn’t swallow the lump in his throat. “Why,” he asked hoarsely, “doesn’t Dagda just come and fight Rhita Gawr himself?”

  “Know you so little of Dagda’s ways?” The steed raised her magnificent head a bit closer to the stars. “Only the strongest immortal spirits, such as Dagda, Lorilanda, and Rhita Gawr—and the very rare mortal who possesses wizard’s powers—can open star doorways. And so only they can move between worlds, and bring their followers with them. Yet Dagda vowed long ago never to use that power, since doing so would violate the basic independence of each world, and its right to choose its own destiny. That is why, whenever Dagda appears in Avalon, it is only as a vision, not as his true self. And that is also why he has now forbidden Merlin to move between the worlds—so that Merlin must remain forever on Earth.”

  “But this is an emergency!” objected Tamwyn. “Avalon is at risk, more than ever before. As are all the other worlds that Rhita Gawr can reach from here—including Earth.”

  Ahearna snorted loudly. “Do you think Dagda does not know this? His agony must be excruciating. Either he discards his most fundamental principle, or he leaves Avalon terribly vulnerable. That is a dilemma too great for anyone, even a god.”

  “Which is part of Rhita Gawr’s plan,” the young man said bitterly. “How long do we have left?”

  “One day, no more.”

  She reared back on her hind legs, whinnying to the Thousand Groves of the stars. “Even as I flew here to find you, riding the River of Time, I saw immortal warriors emerging through the seven darkened doorways that divide Avalon from the Otherworld. They are gathering up there, waiting for their leader’s command. And their leader is Rhita Gawr! They are bound to him, somehow. I could feel it.”

  “And their signal to attack Avalon,” declared Tamwyn, “is when the Heart of Pegasus goes dark.”

  “Then let us fly!”

  The great horse bent down, curling her left foreleg beneath her so that he could reach her back. He climbed on, adjusted his gear, and slid into position on her massive shoulders. Just as he grabbed hold of her mane, he gave Henni a questioning glance. Instantly, the hoolah ran across the grass and leaped onto her back just behind the young man.

  “Hold tight to me,” Tamwyn told him. Then he patted the small bulge in his tunic pocket and added, “You, too, my little friend.”

  Ahearna stood and shook her shining mane. With a swoosh of air, she opened her powerful wings and raised them high. All at once she neighed, bent her muscular legs, and leaped into the sky.

  It was a leap, Tamwyn knew, that would carry them all the way to the stars.

  19 • Star Galloper

  Ahearna, the Star Galloper, leaped skyward bearing Tamwyn swiftly higher. With each stroke of her silvery white wings, he could feel a sudden tensing of her shoulder muscles beneath him—and a powerful whooooosh of air that blew with the force of a giant’s breath. />
  Above, beyond the shredding clouds, the stars burned bright. So bright that Tamwyn couldn’t bear to look at them. Instead, he watched the winged horse as she carried them skyward: the forward tilt of her ears, the shimmering light on her mane, the steady pumping of her wings.

  Henni sat right behind Tamwyn, his huge hands wrapped around his companion’s waist. To Tamwyn’s surprise, the hoolah showed no signs of mischief as they gained altitude, not even an irreverent laugh. Whether Henni’s good behavior came from the wonder of flight, the seriousness of their quest, or the deadly threat that Ahearna had made, he sat in silence as they climbed through the clouds.

  For his part, Batty Lad seemed quite frightened at flying so high. Every so often he stuck his furry little head out of the tunic pocket, so that his cupped ears fluttered like small sails in the wind. But always, within seconds, he would squeak in panic and shrink back inside.

  Tamwyn himself felt no fear at all, merely a sense of rising exultation. Whatever perils lay just ahead, both for him and for his world, here and now he was flying. Up to the stars!

  I wish Elli could be here now, he thought. She would love rising through the clouds this way, soaring through the sky. One day, perhaps, we can do this—if we both survive this day.

  The winged horse burst through a bank of clouds. Suddenly the starlight blazed brighter than ever. Tamwyn took one hand off Ahearna’s mane to shield his eyes, but even that didn’t do much good. He couldn’t squint like this forever. And how was he supposed to confront Rhita Gawr, with one hand always on his brow?

  In a flash, he remembered the chant that Palimyst had taught him to diminish brightness. But would a simple craftsman’s song, designed to dim the light of fire coals, be any help against the far more powerful light of stars?

  “No,” answered Ahearna, having heard his thoughts. Speaking into his mind, she added, “Yet if you say this little chant, I will pour my own power into it, the same power that I use to live among the stars and not be blinded by their fires.”

  And so, to the rhythm of her swooshing wings, he recited the words Palimyst had taught him:

  Bless thee, light of fire coals,

  Cinders of a star,

  Powers from afar.

  Help me seek thy inner soul:

  Starlight never bound,

  Sacred ever found.

  Let my mortal eyes embrace

  Thy immortal flame,

  Only in thy name.

  Give me power thus to see,

  As my spirit lifts—

  Thy eternal gifts.

  Even as Tamwyn spoke the final phrase, the light all around them suddenly changed. It didn’t exactly darken, although the radiance no longer burned his eyes. Rather, the light deepened somehow, replacing brightness with richness, just as wood grain will deepen when the wood is washed with oil. Everything he could see—from a single feather on Ahearna’s wing to the mist-draped mountain far below—seemed clearer, sharper, and fuller. Details were magnified as never before.

  He looked upward—and, for the first time in his life, he truly saw the stars. Perfect circles, flashing with iridescent flames, they didn’t look physical so much as spiritual, closer to the realm of ideas than the realm of reality.

  Then he caught sight of the rippling line of light that cut across the center of the sky—dividing not just the sky but the two halves of time. The River, always flowing in the present. Like the stars themselves, the River of Time grew steadily more radiant as the travelers approached.

  With every wingbeat of Ahearna, Tamwyn drew closer to the realm on high. He spotted many of the constellations that he had studied since childhood—although, as the great horse climbed higher, their shapes began to change. Yet he couldn’t mistake the double ring of stars known as the Circles, whose Drumadian name, the Mysteries, had inspired many a ballad and blessing about the seventh sacred Element. Nor could he miss the Twisted Tree, whose star-studded limbs stretched so far across the sky. And then there was Pegasus, Ahearna’s home. Exactly in the constellation’s center, the Heart shone powerfully.

  All of a sudden, Tamwyn noticed a growing stain of darkness that was seeping into the Heart, dimming its radiance. And then, just outside the darkening star’s rim, he saw something that made him shudder. It was a tiny black blot, visible only because of his enhanced vision. Although it was much smaller than the Heart, it was clearly on the attack, shooting bolts of blackness into the star. Rhita Gawr, in his dragon form!

  Tamwyn’s gaze shifted back to the River of Time. Would they reach it soon enough? That was their only hope of getting all the way to the Heart of Pegasus before it was too late to stop Rhita Gawr.

  Tamwyn glanced worriedly at the star that would be, if darkened, an open doorway to Earth. Then he turned to another part of the sky and viewed the seven thin circles, completely dark inside, that were the stars of the Wizard’s Staff. The doorways to the Otherworld. Blurry shapes—Rhita Gawr’s warriors—poured steadily out of them, flowing into Avalon like noxious fumes.

  Just then he realized that the warriors already on Avalon’s side of the doorways looked darker, more substantial, than those just entering. Of course! They are forming bodies, just as Rhita Gawr has done, in order to act, and fight, in the mortal world. Although Tamwyn still couldn’t tell exactly what forms those warriors were taking, he felt certain they would be designed for battle.

  As if she, too, had seen Rhita Gawr and his warriors, Ahearna flapped her wings even faster. Her flowing mane sparkled with the light of the stars. Watching her, so graceful and strong, Tamwyn felt a touch of hope—and, once again, the simple joy of flight.

  Then something new caught his attention: the branches of the Great Tree. He noticed how gracefully they curved. How they stretched like shadowy peninsulas across the sea of stars. And how, on every twig of every branch, a bright star gleamed.

  So the branches really were pathways to the stars! Struck with wonder, he squeezed Ahearna’s mane. Stars, thousands of them, filled the sky—all of them connected to the Tree of Avalon. They hung from its enormous boughs, surrounding its trunk, like celestial fruit whose very essence was light.

  Now, at last, I understand. Tamwyn gazed intently at the upper reaches of Avalon. Then, in a burst of inspiration he realized something more.

  Since the stars were truly connected to the Great Tree, its sacred élano flowed into them—just as it did into the roots, trunk, and branches. This regular, rhythmic flow of élano, swelling every morning and receding every evening, was the Tree’s way of breathing. And because the stars’ own fires felt those magical breaths—and were fanned by them—they took that magic into their doorways. Yes—and spread that magic to all the other worlds. To every tree, and every seed, in the Thousand Groves.

  Tamwyn smiled with satisfaction. For he knew that he had also finally answered a question that had puzzled Avalon’s bards, sages, and sky-watchers for centuries: Why did the stars swell brighter every morning, and grow dimmer every evening after the last rays of starset?

  Because of the flows of élano, he said to himself, so much happens. And so much is connected! The light of the stars on high is actually linked to the élanolight in Gwirion’s cavern deep inside the trunk. And to plenty more that I don’t even begin to understand.

  He looked downward. Between each stroke of the massive wings, he studied the root-realms far below. There was Stoneroot, jutting out so far from the Tree that it fairly glowed with unobstructed starlight. There was Fireroot, partially masked by reddish smoke; Woodroot, swathed in deep green; and Waterroot, trembling with all the colors of the Rainbow Seas. And there, forever shadowed by the shape of the Tree above, was the darkest realm of all.

  Shadowroot. Where Elli was by now. Had she found White Hands? And the corrupted crystal that served both the sorcerer and Rhita Gawr? Her time, like his own, was fast disappearing.

  All at once, Ahearna banked sharply to the right. Tamwyn’s grip on her mane tightened, as did Henni’s grip around his waist. Ev
en as Tamwyn twisted to see why the horse had turned so suddenly, he heard a new rumbling and pounding—endlessly deep, as if it came from a drum that stretched across the entire sky. Then a great wave of light washed over them, foaming like water but sparkling like the stars themselves.

  They had entered the River of Time.

  The wave of light submerged them completely. All Tamwyn could feel was the horse’s muscular back beneath him; all he could see was the luminous foam that bubbled around him. The deep drumming continued at the same steady rhythm, echoing upon itself. Sparks of light burst everywhere, constantly.

  Yet strangest of all was Tamwyn’s experience of time. Or better, the lack of time. Hard as he tried, he couldn’t feel sure of any past or future, any yesterday or tomorrow. All he had were his incoherent memories of those concepts. Everything was now, the present moment. Only that existed; all the rest was a dream. And since time did not matter, individuals and the choices they made did not matter.

  That’s not true, he reminded himself with considerable effort. There really was a yesterday. And there would be a tomorrow . . . unless Rhita Gawr destroyed it. Which was why every individual, even a small and clumsy one, could matter.

  While he clung to that belief, though, he couldn’t begin to guess how long he’d been riding in the River. Radiant foam swirled around him, always moving, but always in the present. However much time might matter to the worlds outside these luminous waves, it simply didn’t exist here.

  Abruptly, Ahearna’s shoulders tensed. With a mighty flap of her powerful wings, she released a neigh that rose above the rumble of the River. Simultaneously, she kicked her legs so hard that the glittering foam exploded in a burst of brilliance.

  All at once, the foam vanished. So did the sense of no time—and no meaning. Tamwyn could see Ahearna’s wings, pumping hard, as she wheeled above the rippling waves of the River of Time.

  He drew a deep breath, savoring the air. For though it was thinner than the air of the realms down below, it still bore the sweetness of Avalon. And of something else, as well—a sense of the future, of choices he could make and times he might change.