“What is this place?”
“Sorg.” The man seated himself, crossing his legs so each foot rested on the opposite knee, then spread his arms, palms up.
Whym had never heard of such a place. “Who are you?” he asked again, since his question had gone unanswered.
The man’s arms dropped to his side, and he looked toward the floor. “Today, I am no one.”
Whym rolled his eyes. “Then who were you yesterday?”
“Yesterday, no one.”
Whym’s tone rose, and the words sharpened with the next question. “Who were you before you were no one?” Outside, the wind whipped, and the rain started to fall in heavy sheets, obscuring the view.
“One must give up name and title to dwell in the Sorg.”
Whym took a deep breath, calming himself while trying to think of another approach. “Do you live here?”
“Until I do not.”
Well, that’s just great. “Where did you live before you came to the Sorg?” Whym tried yet again to engage the strange man.
“Endeling.”
The village? Maybe he can help us! Maybe there are others. He did say “we” earlier. “Did you escape? Are there others who escaped as well?”
The villager looked up, his faced creased in confusion. “Many have escaped. The men here when I arrived escaped. But I still await guidance from the Before.”
This guy’s crazier than me. But if there are others, maybe they’ll be more helpful. “Where are the others, the ones who escaped?” Despite his excitement, Whym kept his tone low and steady to avoid upsetting the strange man. “Can you take me to them?” The man nodded then held his palms up and began to hum, a single, deep, melancholy note.
Whym took the hint, and walked over to inspect the paintings and carvings on the wall. By the way the symbols were arranged in neat columns, he guessed they were an ancient language. In between the columns were painted scenes, a glowing red-orange altar in the middle of each. A man stood on either side of the altar, the face the same, like a reflection. The man to the right of the altar was always pictured holding a baby, the man to the left carried a different weapon in each scene. What is this place?
He returned and sat next to the man, watching the water drip from the lip of the entrance. When the humming ended, he tried a more open-ended question. “Can you tell me about the Sorg?”
“A place for mourning, when grief is too great. A place for release and rebirth. A place where the Before speak with visions to those who would see. They showed me you would come.”
Whym was now even more confused. “What is the Before?”
“Those who escaped.” The man hummed again.
Whym interrupted this time, not wanting to wait for him to finish. “How long have you been here?”
“A turn or more. Days in the darkness do not pass like those under the sky. Time is lost to the Before. Some visions take moments, some days, some longer.” He raised his head and looked Whym in the eye. “I have lived here too long. The Before no longer speak to me.”
Whym worried he was asking too many questions. He didn’t want to risk upsetting the man before meeting the others who’d escaped Endeling, but he did need to understand. “What brought you here?”
Despondent, the man again let his hands drop to his side and stared at the ground. “The prophet cursed my wife and daughter. We had to burn their bodies. I came to the Sorg for release.”
None of the man’s answers made any sense, but Whym kept trying. “Why would the prophet curse your family?”
The man looked at the beating rain with a sneer. “He is a bad man from a bad place—Bottra.” He spit the words. “We met his demand, told him where to find the Watcher. He cursed us anyway. When he left, one woman felt tired and sore. Then she coughed and coughed, until she spat blood and died. After she was buried, the curse affected more and more people. When our medicine man also fell to the curse, we turned to the Watcher for guidance.”
“And?” Whym asked when a lengthy pause followed.
“The Watcher could not remove the curse. He said the only way to stop it from spreading was to dig up those who’d died and burn their bodies.” A tear rolled down his cheek. “Those burned are voiceless, their memories lost forever.”
Whym had a feeling he was getting closer to learning something useful. “Does this Watcher still live in Endeling?”
The man looked at Whym as if he was an idiot. “The Watcher doesn’t not live among men. He watches from the tallest mountain, so he can see the whole of his land—all the way to the Poison Water.”
Prophet? Bottra? Watcher? Whym had a feeling he should be able to fit together the pieces of the story, as if he were close to understanding the trick to a puzzle. Then a jolt of understanding shook him. A teller. Bothera. The Steward. Could Stern be right? Could there be more to our being here than the trap in Endeling? “Will you take me to the Before?” Whym asked, animated, his excitement quieting the voice in his mind.
The man nodded, and rose to his feet. The storm had abated, and the rain had slowed to a gentle patter. The shadow of evening was creeping down the mountainside, and they watched in silence as it scooted over the valley below. “We have been expecting you.” He placed Whym’s hand on his shoulder. “Come.”
He led into the pitch black of the cave. Whym could tell by the slope they were descending. The temperature, as well, dropped as they entered the depths of the mountain. For a while, their steps and breaths were the only sounds, but then he heard another—the trickle of water. As it grew louder, the trickle became a rush, and he could see a faint glow ahead.
He gasped when the tunnel opened into a scene that stole his breath. Inside the heart of the mountain, was what looked like the night sky with sparkling silver-blue stars. The waters of an underground lake reflected the starred sky and lapped against the smoothed rock where they stood. He stepped past the man toward the closest wall, nearer to a small stream that fed the lake.
He leaned close to examine the source of the glow, and was shocked to find it was coming from small worms attached to the stone. He reached out his hand to touch one, but the man caught his arm. He pulled Whym away from the worms to where a small raft had been dragged onto the stone. When they reached the raft, he pushed it halfway into the water and motioned for Whym to climb aboard. Then he took them farther out into the water, kneeling on the edge and guiding the raft with a long wooden pole. The silver-blue glow of the worms dotted the ceiling and walls everywhere but for two areas of darkness—the tunnel from whence they’d come, and the place where they appeared to be headed.
A while later, the raft scraped against the other side. The man hopped off and dragged it up and out of the water. Whym, still aboard the beached raft, watched as the man grabbed a nearby wooden bucket, filled it with lake water, then poured the water into an empty pool that surrounded an altar the same shape as the one he’d seen in the paintings. Two chalices stood on top. One glowed the same silver-blue as the worms. The next was so black it could only be seen by its reflection of the other.
Whym stepped off the raft and up to the altar, while the man refilled the bucket and again dumped the water into the pool. The water popped and hissed, and the altar began to turn the red-orange of the paintings, revealing symbols carved into its base. Steam rose from the boiling water of the pool.
Wrapped fully in the peculiar steam, the man took a jug from beside the altar and poured the contents into the glowing blue chalice. After taking a couple swallows, he offered it to Whym.
Reluctant to drink, Whym tilted the chalice and touched his tongue to the edge. The liquid tasted salty, like well-cured meat, but with a subtle sour aftertaste. If it didn’t hurt him, it won’t hurt me, he reasoned, tilting the chalice. He drank slowly, watching the man for a cue he should stop.
After three small swallows, the man took the chalice and returned it to the altar.
Then he sat down on the cave floor and tugged on Whym’s pant leg until Whym joined him on the cold ground. Almost as soon as he sat, a wave of sudden exhaustion washed over him, so powerful he couldn’t hold up his eyelids. He leaned backward until he was lying on the ground.
Whym’s mind was flooded with images, as if he were looking simultaneously from hundreds of thousands of different eyes. He tried to follow the visions, but they split like light through a prism, leaving him nauseous and dizzy. Only when he gave up and quit trying to see, did they merge into a single perspective.
There were people gathered at the edge of an azure mountain lake. Two new holes had been filled, wet dirt mounding the graves. A woman, her tear-stained face glaring at the sky and her hands tearing at her flaxen hair, knelt beside them. Then the vision shifted. He saw the same woman climbing toward the Sorg. When she reached the mouth, a man waited, cross-legged in meditation.
Another shift, but this time Whym wasn’t watching the woman. Instead, he saw through her eyes, felt what she felt. Her tired muscles were stiff from sleepless nights. She could taste the blood from a lip cracked open by dehydration. She was deep inside the cave, the silver-blue light of the worms shining behind her. The red-orange altar glowed in front. She was drinking from the second chalice—the black one. It tasted like the drop of dew in a honeysuckle flower. After just one sip, she could feel her aches and pains drain away.
She wandered among the others seated behind the altar, finally selecting a spot next to a man whose wiry brown hair hung below his shoulders and whose mouth was frozen in the upward turn of an eyeless smile. The burdens that had driven her to the Sorg—guilt, pain, the wrenching emptiness of loss—were gone. Her muscles began to stiffen, slowly at first, but before long, blinking required much concentration. Then she couldn’t blink.
The vision ended, and Whym was back in his own body. He was conscious, but his muscles had seized, leaving him only able to control his eyes. The altar glowed a hot red-orange that illuminated the faces behind—the seated people he’d seen in the vision. A few rows back sat the woman, eyeless and smiling.
“Ender of Ages,” she spoke to him with unmoving lips, “Servant of Death. Our ancestors pledged themselves and their descendants to Zvi, the Mirrored God. We brought him with us, his essence imbedded in this altar. We carried him over the sea, through the desert, and wherever we settled in the Land of Amon.” As she spoke, Whym was given images of men carrying the altar—across blistering hot sand, through sludge-bottomed marshes, snaking down the rocky path of a volcanic mountain that belched smoke behind them. “The end of our journey is nigh.”
When the woman stopped speaking, the disorienting jumble of images returned. Then, as before, they merged into one. A woman wearing lion hides, their skull-less heads limp on her shoulders, stood atop the steps of a huge monument with the glowing altar at her back. Around the monument, a great walled city—Scor Zhed—rose from the desert. She called out to cheering soldiers on the ground below as clouds of sand from approaching armies surrounded them from every side. Then he saw the woman dangling from a pole—naked, bloody, lifeless—being carried away by the victors, who were flying the blue and gold Allyrian banner. Whole sections of the great wall had been reduced to rubble, the monument left to crumble and disappear beneath the drifting sand. But inside the monument, he saw people who’d hidden, who’d secreted the altar into a chamber where thousands upon thousands of cross-legged men and women sat with frozen expressions and empty eye sockets.
“Rebirth, release,” she said. “Two reflections of the Mirrored God. The dead preserved are the Before.”
His vision splintered. He realized he was seeing the many locations where the Before rested. Some were familiar to him, even if he’d not been there—the Sorg, the ruined desert monument, secret passages within the mines of Colodor. Others were in lands he didn’t know existed, places beyond the Land of Amon.
“Ender of Ages—” their whispers crescendoed into a chant—“Servant of Death, bring us release.”
As suddenly as they’d begun, the visions stopped. The only sound was the gentle lapping of the lake behind. Whym pushed himself to his knees. The steam was gone, but the altar still glowed. Beside him, the man lay curled, chest rising and falling with staccato breaths.
Whym stood and stepped past the altar. There were people as far as he could see, preserved, their skin dried tight against their faces, holes where once were eyes. “How do I bring release?” he asked the woman who’d spoken earlier. She didn’t answer.
He heard groaning, and hurried back to the altar. “Did you see?” the man rasped.
“What is that drink?”
“From the stars—” The man tilted his head toward the sparkling silver-blue worms overhead. “From a land beyond the Poison Water.” He rolled to his knees. “It connects us to the Before.”
Whym picked up the black chalice from the altar, the one he’d watched the woman drink. “And this?”
“The same.” The man was standing now. “But from the worm eggs before they hatch. It brings release—escape—with a single drop.”
Escape? Whym’s spirits sank. There are no others to help. They didn’t escape Endeling. They escaped life!
“Did you see?” the man asked again.
Ender of Ages, Servant of Death, bring us release. Whym held out the black chalice. “The Before called for release.”
The man accepted it with tears in his eyes. “Thank you.” After a single sip, he replaced the chalice on the altar, found an open space among the Before, and sat cross-legged on the cave floor.
Whym waited until the man’s eyes stopped blinking, then waited some more—longer he was sure than necessary—before walking over to stand before him. He’d seen in the visions what happened next, but it was something he was loath to do.
Whym remembered from the woman’s thoughts in the vision that removing the eyes was a critical part of the ritual. It enabled the Before, as this people referred to the preserved dead, to communicate their memories with the living without being distracted by their surroundings. He also knew leaving the eyes of someone who’d drunk the black liquid in their sockets would be like leaving a disease that would spread to all the Before. It would make their visions disorienting to those who received them.
Just do it. He’s dead. Whym bent, dug the man’s eyes from their sockets, then placed them in the pouch around the man’s neck. After, he turned to the woman from the vision. “Now what?” He waited for her to speak, for a vision, a sign—anything to tell him what to do. Nothing.
He considered drinking again from the blue chalice, but if something went wrong there’d be no one there to help. Unwilling to take that risk, he resigned himself to leaving without an answer and trudged toward the raft. As he passed behind the altar, he tripped over something, falling and scraping his palms and the skin of his knees.
He pushed himself to his knees, and noticed that the back of the altar had the same symbols as the front. Only now, he could understand them, a remnant of memory from the visions:
.
.
Zvi — Mirrored God
Birth — Death
Beginning — Ending
Light — Darkness
Drink the Light for guidance.
Drink the Darkness for release — become the Before and guide the Zvine until the end of their age.
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.
Whym reached back and picked up the object he’d tripped over—a jug with the symbol for Darkness. He removed the stopper and sniffed. Honeysuckle. That’s it!
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“How can you be sure he wasn’t captured?” Tedel poked at the dirt beside him with his thumb, worry lines creasing his brow.
“We’ve watched for four days now,” Kutan snapped. “We’d know if he was captured.”
“Not the whole time,” T
edel shot back. “You wasted part of each day wandering around searching for his tracks after a gully-washing rain.”
“Yeah, and what did you do to help?” Kutan all but snarled.
“Hey, hey.” Stern stepped between them. “This isn’t about blame. All of us want to find Whym.” He gave his apprentice’s shoulder an encouraging squeeze.
“You think he ran away.” Kutan, slow to forgive, coldly removed the hand. “Whym wouldn’t do that. Something’s happened.”
Stern raised the palms of his hands to deny the charge. “I only said he’d been acting strange since the Mysts. Besides, it’s not as if he told us what happened in there.”
“Hey,” Tedel whispered, squinting as he watched the trees. “Do you hear something?”
Kutan listened. When he heard the crunching of footsteps, he grabbed his bow and nocked an arrow.
“You don’t think they found us, do you?” Tedel worried with a hushed voice.
“Shhh.” Kutan, bow drawn, focused on the sound and aimed. When he could make out the man’s face, he released. The arrow whizzed past Whym’s head.
“What the—”
“Four days!” Kutan stomped toward Whym. “You better be injured.”
Whym carried a jug engraved with a strange symbol, but looked decidedly uninjured. “Four days? But I—”
Kutan threw his arms around Whym. “It’s so good to see you.” Then he shoved him away. Whym staggered and fell backward to the ground, clutching the jug against his chest. “Four days! What happened?”
Whym looked up, smiling. “I know how to deal with the soldiers.”
Mountain Above Welloch, Chapter 54
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.
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My fire-passion burns as a smoldering dragon,
curling in rings of blackened smoke.
I cough, and through my lungs, my pride rips,
grasps your hair and jerks you into my flames.
Fear trembles in the ashes.
Lying in your arms, the dragon in me sleeps.
Birthrights_Revisions to the Truth Page 34