Nephril only stared at Sconner, open mouthed, as he continued, “From yet another text, another one that time has also brought to dust, but that now lives on in my memory: Life, and only life, with its unique knowing, can collapse the continuum of infinitely possible worlds to a singularity that is but the one ‘True World’.”
Nephril stood and grasped the balcony’s parapet. He let his eyes wander across the bright patchwork of stone that he now saw was life’s last and only bastion. It was a refuge that plainly stood proud once more, sure again in its stand against Nature.
“So,” he said, surprise in his voice, “Leiyatel works her magic without need of spell or trick because the engers of old were so clever. They found a way of turning life’s only purpose to its own just ends, against Nature. They used knowing to fashion and sustain this lone sanctuary, this realm of Dica, this isle of life within a barren sea. Is that not so, Sconner? Be that Leiyatel’s true embrace?”
It was Falmeard who answered from the room behind them. “If all there is is what life experiences, nothing more, then it would appear you now have your answer, Nephril.” He stepped through the doorway and stood between them, turned to Nephril and smiled.
Nephril did nothing more than lift an eyebrow, to which Falmeard added, “We’re far more important than your time-wearied cynicism would have us be, isn’t that so, Steermaster Sconner?”
There was no answer, not from the wisest mariner Dica had ever known. Nature had had one last small victory even if it were but only a grain of sand amidst a vast universe of forfeited worlds.
Time had by now crept on. Mount Esnadac reared above them as a blackened silhouette, dark against a dawn’s rose-tinted sky, a sky fast filling with future’s fulsome promise. All was now at peace in their damaged world, quiet once more, safe in Leiyatel’s fortuitously renewed embrace.
50 Where the Stars Do Live
The River Cleofan was far from its usual clarity, now more a thin, grey soup of meal sliding grittily beneath a dull-brown froth. Life had fast returned to Cleofandale, quickened by the mountain’s fertile gift of ash and the warm sun beneath which it now lay.
It was too late in the year for crops, so all that wasn’t ploughed or fallow-spread had burst forth through the grey crust in a riot of late Summer colours. It was as though life hastened to catch up, its breath making the air unusually heavy. Like the headiness of midsummer, it boasted round, languid scents and soft, shimmering clouds of darting midges.
However, the dale’s broad, lower and more sheltered spread soon sapped their purpose, drew them from the sunlight to the shade of some willows. There, Nephril and Falmeard pleasantly yielded to the soporific. They sat on the riverbank, content to watch the leaf-shadowed sunlight ripple across a lazy stretch of water, slowed in a deep elbow of the broad River Cleofan.
A kingfisher flashed by, arrow-sharp to the water, an iridescent splash of blue and orange. It startled Nephril awake. “The days are flowing as steadily as this river, Falmeard, drawing themselves shorter against the sun’s ever lowering arc.” He looked up at that sun’s place in the sky. “We have less of the orb than would seem seasonal, so must not dally unduly.”
Falmeard smiled. “Seems to me you’ve got more than enough new vigour to outrun it, my old friend, eh, more than enough.”
It brought a small laugh from Nephril. “Aye, maybe so, Falmeard. A new vigour indeed, but by it a new curse!”
“I’m due that same malady, though, aren’t I, Nephril? Hmm? Immortality beholden to Leiyatel’s close weft and weave?”
Nephril quietly stared through Falmeard for a while before grunting dismissively. He then patted Falmeard on the knee before rising to his feet.
He stretched and sighed. “A renewed Leiyatel’s embrace, eh? Aye, thou art right, mine friend. This time, though, I am no longer a surfeit. Thou see, we were here afore her this time, afore her rebirth, so I am no longer grit within her wheels.” He grinned. “No longer injurious to her purpose.”
He offered a firm hand and pulled Falmeard smartly to his feet. “We need to get on with our journey. Although indolence be pleasant enough we have far to go today. Before we do, though, remember what I said about thine own part in our salvation, Falmeard. You just think on, as Storbanther would hath said.”
He strode out without looking back, for all the world like a man of twenty. Even his hair seemed darker, thicker, softening what were still quite drawn and angular features. He’d gained a firmness that even Falmeard had noticed, even in the short time they’d know each other - once again.
As Falmeard caught up with him, he realised how better matched Nephril and Penolith now were, at least seeming more of an age. With a new Leiyatel, one unable to reabsorb what had not been of her own same issue, all Galgaverrans now shared that same unending fate – immortality, one that steadily let slip their blood’s own bound constraints. Nephril and Penolith were lucky, Falmeard thought, lucky to have each other’s company to soften their eternity together, but what now of his own?
Nephril certainly made shorter shrift of the tramp up Cleofandale, gave cause to embarrass Falmeard’s much younger years. Nephril had hardly broken sweat by the time they came to the scree at the foot of the sheer rock face, there at the head of the dale. Without pause, he set to climbing the steep steps and rock-cut ladders that led to the top.
Although Cleofandale itself had been new to Falmeard, the view they now had to the south somehow felt familiar. He couldn’t quite place it exactly, but the long stretch of Bazarral to the southwest brought back memories, ones he should not have had. More so with the Esnadales, though, where the valleys and hills were as soft as a mother’s reassuring embrace.
“Come on, Master Falmeard! Get a move on!” Nephril called down. “’Tis already beyond noon, and still a way to go.” His face then vanished beyond the cliff’s sharp edge, stark against the pale blue sky.
When Falmeard himself reached it and looked north towards the ragged wall of the Upper Reaches, he saw Nephril’s lean figure leant purposefully against the gentle slope of the scarp. Shaggy sheep - their fleeces overly long unshorn - teetered after him on their stick-like legs, close in along the paths they’d long worn there.
Falmeard was a while catching up, joining Nephril on the rough lane that ran beside the wall. He’d scattered the sheep before him, each darting off into the scrub and bog grasses that littered their ancient tenure.
From that lane - the one they’d travelled by wealcan not long before - they passed through the same gateway Nephril had taken them by for the Farewell Gap, the memory seeming to keep him quiet, a little sullen perhaps. It left Falmeard lost to a growing familiarity.
Instead of turning to the east after crossing the mountain’s shoulder, this time Nephril headed west. He followed a little used flagged lane, sharply choppy with ancient years. It rose steadily onto the northern flank of Mount Esnadac, offering a long view down to the Lords Demesne and the bright green slash of the Park of Forgiveness, there at the foot of the Great Wall.
By late afternoon the sun slanted its way towards the Sea of the Dead Sun and the Great Crystal Plain beyond. It looked more bloated, shimmered more through the distant sky’s thin, green air.
When they came to a halt, they could feel the cool edge of a chilly night following the sun, a sun whose longer shadows now darkened a steep flight of steps across their way. Nephril turned to Falmeard and grinned, a little sheepishly it seemed.
“I have enjoyed our walk today, Falmeard. A welcomed break after all our recent chores. It has been good to breathe more of Dica’s restored air, to bask a little in its hoarded sunshine.”
He turned and looked down the long flight of steps. “I have not far to go now before meeting with Penolith.”
“You?” Falmeard queried, somewhat surprised. “But I thought we were both going to Grayden, to witness Phaylan and Mirabel’s vows.”
Sparrows appeared on the steps, pecking away at seemingly nothing as is their wont. They seemed untroubl
ed by the two men, enough for a squabble to break out between them.
“I think...” Nephril began. “No, I am certain thou wilt know thy way, my beloved and age-long friend, for I suspect thou hast been this way before.” He gestured towards the steps, down which the sparrows flitted here and there, testing for grub or worm, where they flapped each about the other in mock fight.
“I have mine own more private purpose,” Nephril explained. “Something I need to touch afore it be taken so wholly to rust.”
He looked out to the distant blue-grey sheen of sea now furled with waves, rolling in towards the Terraces of the Sunsets. “I must mark mine remembrance of a beginning, but one I now know was not the first. That first I suspect belongs to thee, Falmeard, and a time once passed adjacent to our one here.”
Nephril clamped his hands about Falmeard’s arm and drew him near. “Take thy time, Falmeard, for thou art its master after all. That much I know from thy victory over Nature. Take thy time, as Leiyatel fashioned thee to, and waste not the new chances it brings.”
He drew Falmeard to an embrace, squeezed him lovingly and then pushed away, apart once more. “Fare thee well, mine fellow cloth, cut pattern woven of like weft and weave of self-same Leiyatel. I need not urge thee to search us out anon, for we all cannot long remain apart. After all, ‘tis but the nature of our common cloth.”
With that he turned and strode off up the lane, his gaunt figure made more lithe by a strengthening weft and weave. He never looked back, never had need, and so soon dwindled to a speck in the distance.
Falmeard took to the steps and steadily made his way down towards the sparsely inhabited districts that bordered the Lords Demesne. He wasn’t to get quite that far, though.
Where the slopes allowed, thin strips of farmland had spread along narrow shelves, cracking open stridently wet colours from the castle’s dry skin. Small and irregular fields wove their way between cliffs and crags, between knots of houses and halls, of stores and mills, like shards of emerald scattered across a dead fire’s hearth.
After a while, and by now on a narrow lane between irregular fields, he hurried past one being hoed by an old, bent figure. The farmer looked up at the sound of Falmeard’s boots, squeaking on the smooth, stone flags. As the lane dropped beside the field, the old man watched Falmeard’s head bob along behind the dry stone wall between them before returning to the quiet monotony of his weeding.
A farmhouse was just beginning to come into view for Falmeard, its roof barely visible above the level of the lane. Beyond it he could see the farmyard bordered by smithies, by byres and barns, its cobbled surface awash with mud and shit.
At its centre stood a well, beneath a small and steeply pitched roof, beyond which the yard fell away to a cliff. Over the yard’s meagre wall lay open such wonderful views.
Falmeard’s way now dived between stout stone walls and brought him out on a level with the farmyard to his right. The imposing farmhouse sat to the right of it, overshadowed by a cliff behind. In a tower at the apex of the yard’s arched gateway a handless clock stared out, oblivious of time.
He passed beneath it into the richly smelling but quite deserted yard and there peered up at the farmhouse. It was a good few minutes before Falmeard heard a sash window lift, and saw a figure there.
“Good day,” it called. “And what, if I may ask, might you be after?” When he just stood gormlessly staring up, the woman closed the window and soon reappeared at the farmhouse door, cautiously stepping into the yard. When she drew nearer, he saw a reticent yet honest and open smile, one that somehow made him feel awkward.
“Good … good day, Mistress … Ge … Geran.” He was drawn to dwell on the dimples at the sides of her full lips, and the milky smoothness of her shoulders. He reddened, as he knew he always had.
Geran giggled, as he knew she had once always done, and without a word, he followed her past the scullery where the water butt was kept and into her kitchen.
“Would you like some tea then, Master ... Falmeard? We’ve a fresh bag of nettle that needs opening, if you’re interested.” He thanked her and accepted her kind offer, as she somehow knew he would, and bade him sit at the kitchen table whilst she brewed.
He chose a chair from which he could follow her movements as she filled the stained black kettle, and before hanging it above the fire’s coals. All the while she absently hummed something he couldn’t quite place unlike the effect her lithe figure was now having.
He found difficulty taking his eyes from her fine dark hair, gathered in a linen fold, and her ponytail that hung down her back to her waist. Geran’s figure was petite and unshapely, not unlike a boy’s, but her skin belied her nearly sixty years by being so clear and milky white.
It was her face, though, that enchanted Falmeard, that brought out her unusual beauty, her wide set eyes resting welcomingly beneath dark and finely wrought brows. Her knob of a nose sat daintily above her full red lips, ones that always seemed to rest in a half smile.
The sing-song lilt of Geran’s voice, the sweet tune she hummed, all brought his eyes back to her gaily swinging ponytail. It made him remember a wish, a long forgotten one. It brought back the memory of an old verse, the one from Lake Dica’s pavilion he’d so lovingly translated, the words to which he now heard softly slipping from his lips.
“Mellow stoned buildings’ lofty chimneys rise
O’er steep raked roofs hooding mullion stares,
Down tumbling ginnels filled o’ pedlar-cast cries
Unto cobbled courts and sett-laid squares.
From postern and lych and wicket gate,
‘Cross park and field and meadow straight,
To tavern and forge and creaking mill,
In Bazarral, in Bazarral, its fair folk spill.
Proud jutting jetty’s arching storeys mass
O’er tight pressed alleys carting woven wares,
‘Pon rumbling wagons aft shaft-held ass
Unto havened ports and far-off fairs.
In banquet and love and drinking song,
With yearn and ache and heartfelt long
To praise and troll and laud it all,
Oh Bazarral, oh Bazarral, its fair folk call.”
Geran now sat before him across the table, the tips of her fingers achingly close to his; softly reaching, yearning to touch. A distant whistle drifted through the kitchen like a forgotten kettle slowly coming to the boil.
Now lost to the moment, to the warm entwining of fingers, to the sweet, sweet taste of ripe-red lips, Falmeard wondered at the vision he now saw in Geran’s bright eyes. Carried within their longing look of love were the very stars he knew they each did truly hold.
Appendix - Aoide tar Degan
In translation:
Ode to Death
Naningemynd goes down to the stream
Where it tumbles, falls and soothes all hurts
In the land of our dead,
In the land of everlasting dreams.
There will be found no remorse,
No vainglory,
No regret for a life ill spent,
Or the yearned-for life of another.
There will rest our own truth guarded from lies,
Safe in its purity from a gross world.
In a deep sylvan glen lies Naningemynd’s lair,
Dank place below feet of men, above spring of waters,
In the land of the living,
In the land of everlasting hopes.
There struts remorse
And vainglory,
Regrets for lives ill spent,
For unrequited envy of others.
There lives our own lie guarded from truths,
Beyond reach of purity in this gross world.
Lone o’ Naningemynd e’er ‘twixt lair and stream,
Long come vapoured weft and weave twain tread and source,
In the land of all things,
In the land of everlasting clay.
There be found acceptance
/> And humility,
Understanding of life well spent,
In serenity only of self.
There will fill our own untrammelled knowing,
Of a True World safe in uncertainty.
In the original, ancient Bazarran:
Aoide tar Degan
Naningemynd ganan nioere ta der aedre
Hwaerh hayt prasses, licgardes en aeghwilc awierdnes loccianes,
Eyn der land af ure dead,
Eyn der land af aefreniehstan swefnen.
Thaer willa bweyn infindan neanig remors, neanig idelgielp,
Neanig regretten ac an dwelle cystanent yfel,
Ac der giernanacent dwelle af onoder.
Thaer willa reposen ure habban treowlic fram leasspellen nerunganed,
Haele eyn hit cleannes fram an cors leoht.
Eyn an deop woded glenne gelege af Naningemynd leasspelled,
Plaece dank nioere gangendes af mannes, abufan aewielm af lagustreames,
Eyn der lande af der lifian,
Eyn der lande af aefreniehstan ahopianen.
Thaer remors en idelgielpth strutianen,
Regrettes ac dwellen cystanent yfel,
Ac der ableant nidan af oders.
Thaer ure habban leasspelles dwelles fram treowlicas nerunganed,
Geondan der atillan af claennes eyn thesis cors leoht.
Alleinne af Naningemynd aefre betweox gelege en aedre,
Lang cuman smocaned weft en wefan twegen tredan en sores,
Eyn der lande af aeghwilc thinges,
Eyn der lande af aefreniehstan claeg.
Thaer bweyn infindan tacanlica
En humilite,
Understandan af dwelle tela cystanent,
Last True World (Dica Series Book 3) Page 20