Yondering

by Robert Reginald (ed)

  He had done all of this, somehow, and had nearly killed himself.

  Yet….

  He was whole and alive.

  A sound tugged for his attention. A slight sound, hardly more than a mewing breath, but he turned toward it.

  He stumbled over rocks and boulders, following the sound, until he found the source. A bird, a snow-dove, a white-feathered sea bird, beautiful and melodious. But they never flew this far inland.

  This one was dying. One wing twisted beneath the slight body, the feathers finger-spread in agony. The other was nearly severed from the body by a deep burn that had seared flesh and destroyed pinions.

  Kynne remembered the final sound before the darkness—the song that had ended so abruptly, crushed and despairing.

  He had done this. He and that damnable blue light. He looked upward, toward the Veil of Heaven, as if seeking expiation, forgiveness, he knew not what. And there he saw the worst of his handiwork.

  The Veil of Heaven was torn. Instead of the opalescent, even gray extending forever, horizon to horizon, that Kynne had known every day of his life, there was raggedness. The Veil flickered with impossible colors—scarlet and turquoise, emerald and violet—along the edges of a deep gash that extended like a wound from east to west immediately above the valley. The gash sliced upward until Kynne could no longer trace its outlines.

  The bird mewed.

  He reached down and lifted it up, touched it tenderly, tears forming in his eyes. He murmured empty comfort, wishing to lull both pain and fear. And then the murmurs turned to words, the words to patterns, the patterns to color-sounds. Words of Healing.

  He knew them, could call them up at will.

  His hands became surer as they moved across broken flesh, smoothing feathers, knitting tendons and sinews sheared by his power. The mewing stilled, then raised again in a triumphant song as the snow-dove spread its wings and flew, a snowflake against the milky white of the Veil, and sang its way beyond Kynne’s sight.

  And the Veil of Heaven was healed, once again featureless, calm, protective.

  Kynne sank to the ground as the color/sound patterns began again.

  “Kynne.”

  “I hear.”

  “I am Honna of Los’ang, Master Maker and Speaker for the Council. I am old and have no acolyte to assume the blue robe of the Master Maker when I die.

  “I chose you as my successor, my acolyte, that time long Cycles past when I saw you in your village. I have waited with the infinite patience of age until you should grow into the powers of Omne. And now I, and the Makersraad with me, know that you are ready. I have chosen you and I Name you.”

  “I cannot accept,” Kynne said, his eyes burning with remembered shame. “I have destroyed with the power of the Makers. I cannot be one with you.”

  The color-pattern that was Honna of Los’ang responded gently, encouragingly.

  “True, you have acted in haste and in anger. You first used the Makerslight to kill, then threatened your fellows with it. But you could not call it up against the one you had loved. Your error was in your anger, not in your unworthiness. And the greatest wrong you have done in this valley has been healed. By you.”

  Even as the patterns swirled through Kynne, the snow-dove returned, winging low across the sky, its song preceding it like the first clean breath of Seed Time breezes. Kynne’s heart lightened at the sound, at the sight of the white bird as it soared upward until finally obscured by the lowest mists of the Veil.

  “And you have been healed,” Honna continued.

  “How?” Kynne asked. “What is this blue light? Is it magic? Can it both kill and heal?”

  There was a noticeable pause in the pattern-flow. Then a new color formed, stronger than Honna’s, although carrying less authority than that of the Master Maker.

  “I am Master Maker of the Pillars of Beginnings,” the pattern stated abruptly.

  Kynne was awed by the power in the pattern. Honna’s had been awesome enough, feminine yet strong, old yet sturdy and self-controlled. This voice/pattern was masculine, youthful and exuberant, overflowing with life and energy.

  “My studies have been directed toward answering these questions. Where do our powers come from? How do they develop? For nearly ten Cycles I have immersed myself in the ancient writings concealed in the Sanctuary of the Pillars of Beginnings, hoping to find a final answer.

  “And I have failed.”

  Kynne could read disappointment in the patterns, but did not interrupt. The swirling continued, as communicative in its pausing as in its speaking.

  “Not entirely,” Honna’s patterns said, half in consolation, half in pride. “Indanan is the youngest of the Makersraad and has accomplished much. Much more than I have in my sixty Cycles. We know what the power is not, which is the first step toward understanding.”

  “I thank you, Master Maker,” the second voice-pattern said. “The power that wells through you, Kynne of Myvern, that streams through your fingers, is inherent in our world. It is not magic, at least not as you would define the word, although many of its manifestations seem without natural cause or seem to oppose natural law. To some extent, all Omnans possess the Makers-power. We dream as children, and those dreams are often monitory. We can communicate with others over long distances, feeling…indeed, knowing without knowing that family and friends are well or ill, troubled or at peace. We sense a communal unity that rests unbroken throughout the land.”

  Kynne nodded, thinking of evidences of that unity he had seen and felt in Myvern…and had not been allowed to taste fully.

  “But in some of us, these abilities concentrate until they can be drawn upon at will. They become visible, an emanation of blue light that focuses the will and allows the wielder to make real imagination and ideas. And those in whom this force is strongest become Acolytes, Makers, and—rarely—Master Makers. They wear rhiam robes and through them Omne is preserved stable and healthy. They protect the land, watching over it as a mother over a child.

  “You are one of these. Your Makerslight flares strongly, your patterns—we on the Makersraad refer to them as mentrans—swirl clearly and brightly. You belong to the Makersraad.” The voice fell silent.

  “You have proven yourself worthy through your own admission of guilt and responsibility,” Honna concluded. “We allow none among us who do not recognize and regard the immense power we wield, as well as the potential for destruction that is the obverse of the Words of Healing, the Words of Light. You know. You have felt the darker urgings of the Makers-power and have passed through them into fuller light. We welcome you.”

  Kynne remained silent a few moments longer. They he raised his eyes and spoke, as if to the Veil of Heaven.

  “You say there is no magic in what I do, that all of us possess at least a bit of this power. How? Why?”

  Indanan’s masculine patterns began again.

  “We of the Makersraad have been searching for that answer for half a millennium, Master to Acolyte, in an unbroken line. Once, there was no Makersraad, only dumb animals and beasts and darkness and death. Then suddenly, we were there, and with us the force of mind we wield.

  “We do not know where the powers developed. But we do know that they are amplified by the rhiam. The plant—which provides food and clothing and is the staple of existence—alters us. For most of our people, contact with the Makers-power is slight, occurring at moments of distraction, when the conscious mind is directed elsewhere, allowing other levels to function…weakly…and filter through. But for a few, the barriers between conscious and unconscious are shattered. Rhiam facilitates the break, amplifies the minds of the Makers and reposes within each, awaiting the call.

  “Thus, we of the Makersraad wear rhiam robes—undyed at first, then later tinged saffron or blue by our individual emanations. Yours was prepared for you Cycles ago, anticipating the moment when you would summon your full potential.

  “Beyond this we do not know. What the process is, how it functions, why it functions
in so few of us—these are the great, unanswered questions.”

  “That is why you are called,” Honna began, her colors merging with Indanan’s, then strengthening to overwhelm the other’s. “You were selected long ago. You called to me during that visit many Cycles ago. You have great ability, perhaps greater than many now serving on the Council. You have taken long to mature. Often Acolytes are chosen as infants or children and the training begins immediately. Yet the older the Acolyte is when he first broaches the vessels of power within, the stronger those powers may develop—a paradox, but true.

  “Therefore, we came to you. We strengthened you at a moment of crisis. We guided your thoughts through the convolutions of consciousness, helping you to trace the single pathway through the maze leading to your final barriers, and to burst through them.

  “But you drew upon the power that stopped the beast…and you stopped it painlessly, humanely, and with sorrow.

  “You repressed the power when part of you would have called it up and childishly threatened those who mocked you without understanding.

  “You used the Makers-power to destroy when you felt the stability of your world threatenedk and by doing so brought great pain to another living thing….

  “And you wept for that pain, and healed it, opening within yourself a wound as deep and as agonizing, in empathy with the snow-dove.

  “And you…you alone of all Omnans in living memory, have penetrated the Veil of Heaven. Not even your concentrated will was sufficient to extend beyond the Veil—you could only rend it, slash into it. But even such a small action is beyond the collective powers of the Makersraad of Omne. We hope…we pray that through you, this great mystery may be understood.

  “For that reason we call you to the Makersraad.”

  Kynne’s eyes closed and for a brief indrawn breath of time he seemed to see, not merely the color/patterns of mentrans, but the Makersraad itself, a small circle of figures, nine in all, robed in flaming saffron or flashing blue, hands joined, faces hooded and in shadow, standing in a curiously appointed chamber. Behind them, twelve stone seats flickered in the golden glow of stone sconces jutting from the walls. On three of the twelve walls, the sconces were dark.

  Then, for the briefest of instants, a tenth stood in the chamber—a form in gray, lean and youthful even through the drapery of the rhiam robe.

  He knew it was himself.

  The circle burned more brightly. High on the upper ranges of the Lesser Pillars, miles distant from Los’ang and the great Makersraad, Kynne felt the warmth, felt a tingling progress through his limbs, saw his robe glow first saffron then blue in correspondence to the concentrated will of the Council.

  Then the blue-robed figure at the head of the circle, Honna of Los’ang, Master Maker and head of the Makersraad, reached out and touched the gray-robed figure…touched Kynne of Myvern. He felt gentle fingertips on his forearm, almost saw the fingers as he stood in the light diffusing from the Veil of Heaven, surrounded by the ruin he had made. The song of the snow-dove echoed through him, and shafts of yellow and blue spilled from the Makers, touching the phantom Kynne in the Council Palace at Los’ang, encircling him in a network of power—himself the center, they the circumference.

  Honna’s patterns overrode his vision, and he no longer saw, but heard.

  “I am Honna, Master Maker of Los’ang, presiding Maker of the Council of Makers of Omne. I call you, Kynne, to me, to be one with us, to share your knowledge and power with us, to aid us in protecting and strengthening our land. And I Name you, as is my right, for in the Naming of a Maker lies great power.

  “And your name comes down from before the histories, a Name in a tongue not our own. I Name you Wisdom.

  “I Name you Iam’Kendron of Los’ang, Honna-word and Acolyte.”

  Kynne—Kynne no longer but Iam’Kendron of the Makersraad—pulled his gray robe tightly around himself, noting as he did so the subtle play and interplay of yellow and blue in the fibers. He tightened the woven belt, then turned for a second and faced north. There, behind him, lay Cycles of loneliness and frustration, of fear, and of loss—and there also lay the ashes of a youthful love that could not be, of anger and hatred that had led him through the mazes of himself into the center and beyond. There, to the north, Kynne of Myvern had lived and grown.

  And here, in this valley, he had died, utterly and entirely.

  Facing southward, toward the inner faces of the Lesser Pillars, toward the rich fields of Heartland, toward the Jamison River as it wound through Omne, and ultimately toward Los’ang itself—toward the Palace of the Makers of Omne—Iam’Kendron began the first long journey of his life.

  EVERGREEN, by Arthur Jean Cox

  Gay, lilting music spilled into the hallway from the ballroom—“The Ballroom in the Sky” as it billed itself, for it was on an upper floor of a lofty Manhattan hotel—and no passerby failed to turn a momentarily quickened eye toward its large door. That door was flanked by two small evergreen trees in ceramic jars and each tree was flanked, on the side nearest the door, by a man. These were both serious men, with watchful eyes and positively grim haircuts: men who meant business, although everyone in the room behind them meant play. For more than music spilled into the hallway. There was also laughter and the happy chatter of some three hundred men and women who seemed to be celebrating a triumph of some sort, or to be congratulating themselves on their own sense of life. In these respects they were, of course, very much like any New Year’s Eve crowd…and, as a matter of fact, it was New Year’s Eve. In another two hours and twenty-eight minutes there would begin, at the stroke of midnight, the year 2100.

  There were not many passersby, but there were a few; and one turned more than his quickened eye toward the large door. He turned also his feet, until he was stopped by the two guards, who had moved forward to block his way.

  “May we help you, sir?”

  “I would like to see Mr. Grandcourt.”

  “And what,” asked the guard to his right—a soft-looking man, but so very large that he dwarfed both the passerby and the other guard—“what is the nature of your business with him?”

  “I’m afraid it’s personal.”

  Their eyes searched his face. It was an ordinary enough face, although its eyes were still a little too quickened; the face of a man of, say, forty.

  “Personal?” It was again the large guard who spoke; the other was clearly a subordinate personage. “You are acquainted with Mr. Grandcourt, then?”

  “Oh, yes! I’ve known Dave for years. We went to school together.”

  And the faces of the two guards froze.

  But the passerby didn’t notice. He was craning his neck to look past the guards into the Ballroom. It was a glittering crowd that he saw there: obviously affluent, distinctly youngish, and very well groomed—if you made allowance (as he did) for an eccentric uniformity of dress. For the men all wore green tuxedoes and the women flaring gowns of muted greens and yellows. But he didn’t care: he’d found what he was looking for. “There’s Dave now—standing at that table over there under the windows and looking out over the crowd with that imperial gaze of his.”

  And in his eagerness he started forward, raising his arm as if to hail the man he had come to see. But neither movement was completed. Both guards fell upon him and bore him to the floor. He was pinned to the carpet and the object he held in his uplifted hand was wrenched from his grip. And, suddenly, other men with grim haircuts had come running down the hallway, and they too laid hands upon the passerby. He was hoisted to his feet and hustled out of sight so quickly and so very quietly that one might almost have fancied he would never be seen again. And they took with them the small but deadly explosive device with which he had meant to greet his old friend.

  All this was done so efficiently that the three hundred men and women in the Ballroom never knew that it had taken place or that they had ever been, for a passing moment, in any danger. And the music swept some scores of them across the mirrored dance floo
r in a lilting, gliding movement.

  It was now ten P.M. And at this moment there could be detected a change in the tempo of the humming swarm in the Ballroom, but only on one side, at the edge of the crowd nearest the door. For someone had entered there, someone who was trailed after a little uncertainly, even a little sheepishly, by the two guards. People passing by stopped and stared at this newcomer. Men and women dining at nearby tables suspended that interesting activity, forks and spoons poised near their mouths. The nearest dancing couples faltered and slowed, the face of each partner turned in her direction.

  There was something shocking in the appearance of this woman. Everyone felt that; it was reflected in every face. Someone watching those faces might have seen here and there very much the same words trembling silently but visibly upon more than one pair of lips: “Old…terribly old.” And then the next moment one would have seen something very strange: those lips became still and then smiled a curious inward ironic smile. And yet it was undeniable that she was old—old and horribly decayed. Her face was spotted and bruised and wrinkled beyond repair. Her hair was gray and very scanty. The arms projecting from her ridiculously fluffy dress were painfully thin, almost as thin as the two canes with which she tested the floor before her as she advanced. Her gown spared the viewers any glimpse of her legs and for that they might well have been grateful. The dark eyes that glittered from her ruined face were the only things about her that seemed truly alive—the objection that could have been made to them, that was made to them, was that they were too alive. And, as she advanced, ripples of pity, disgust, horror, and—could it be?—guilt spread outward from her through the crowd…spread outward and slowly faded away.

  A man came forward and confronted her. He was a tall man with a forehead so high and hair so light in texture and color that one’s first glancing impression was that he was bald. But he wasn’t bald; and once one noticed that, one revised one’s estimate of his age downward from, say, fifty to within a year or two of thirty.